There’s a little roadside stand falling apart and half hidden. No one has used it in a very long time, and I doubt many people even know it exists. It was important to someone at some time or another, important enough to build. It was important to others who came to buy the vegetables sold there, but those people are long gone now. No one needs the decrepit stand on the side of the road anymore.
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| They sell corn and tomatoes and squash here. |
It’s like the old 1834 Hearse House in Pownal that I wrote
about last year. Little did I know after
I took the photo of it, the very next day
a crew came by and decided to “fix” it.
All those old beautiful cedar shingles were removed and the building got
a “facelift.” They took the old “Hearse
House 1834” sign off, and now it just looks like a new shed. No one outside of Pownal would know that the
old First Parish Church
along with its historic graveyard had their very own fancy Hearse House. That’s progress, I guess.
There are other ones, too.
Today I hiked to an old cabin I used to admire, figuring I’d get some
photos of the old place against the fall foliage, but when I got there, the
cabin was gone. All that was left was a
couple of rotted old boards. It used to
be such a nice old place. Granted, it
was beyond the point where humans could live in it, but it always reminded me
of the history of Maine. And now it’s gone.
Each time one of the old buildings disappears, I feel like
I’ve done a bit of a shift from one universe to another extremely close
parallel universe. In the one universe,
the old building still stands. In the
nearby universe, the old building has been removed. Both universes go along their own
tracks. One keeps the building. One loses the building. Perhaps in a third universe, the building
never even existed.
But I still have them all in my memory, and they can’t take
that away from me. Not yet, anyway. I still see the old Hearse House when I drive
by it, not the new shed. I see the old
cabin in the woods, just as it always was.
I see the roadside stand filled with vegetables and fruits. I’m keeping track of them all. As long as I’m still here, so are they . . .
somewhere. When I’m gone, well, that’s
another story. I will have shifted
myself.
