RSS feedLeft broken, empty, in despair…
By Silver Blue
…wanna breathe, can’t find air…*
History is slowly fading from view across America. Businesses are going under, and their buildings, instead of being repurposed, are being torn down.
Growing up, my summer was spent in my grandmother’s town of Kenton, Ohio.
One of the stores was an F. W. Woolworth’s, that went under long before the actual demise of the chain.
For years, it sat, like this:
Windows boarded up, or painted over. What would it have looked like had it still been open?
This was a primitive attempt, in April 2000, to recapture the look. I could do better these days, but hey, I was in my learning phase then.
What did it look like inside? How badly had the building deteriorated?
Gee. Thanks. I can see a heck of a lot. How about some fill light?
Grainy, but better. Sad. Is that … water on the inside of the building?
Alas, indeed it is. Anything of value had been stripped from the inside (including some things NOT of value, like the floor tile — necessary, for asbestos abatement, of course. But this was spelling the beginning of the end). Even though the building really wasn’t architecturally “significant”, you can bet that it was structurally sound, and quite solid when built, unlike the shell buildings of today.
All that’s left now, however (as of 2008, when I was last in Kenton, for my grandmother’s funeral), is a parking lot:
They say you can’t go back, anymore than you can stop the wind from blowing – you can’t change the changes going on…they say you can’t go back and you can’t stop the door from closing…once you’ve gone, you can’t go back home…**
Silver Blue, who misses the way things were.
(* “Left Outside Alone” by Anastacia, ** “You Can’t Go Back Home” by Sylvia)
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