Amanda the Great by Amanda El-Dweek for May 11, 2022

I know the feeling…

Well, at least it is still farmland. Tried to find the old place once and it was somewhere under tract houses, strip malls, and asphalt as far as the eye could see.

Sometimes, you really can’t go home again.

Ah, that’s poignant . .

I’ve got the opposite experience. The farmhouse is still there, but the fields are all subdivisions now. And the Sinclair station down the road is a chiropractor’s office now.

Where my family home was is now a carpark. Nearly all the houses in the area are now student accommodation for the local university.

My childhood home is now an on ramp to a freeway.

Everything changes………not always for the better. The house we lived in when I was born is now in the historical registry. They tore down the houses next to it, so there is an apartment building right next to it. My dad wouldn’t sell the house to them. Kinda neat.

I’ve the very same experience. However the choke cherry patch is still there. Waiting for Grandma to make jam of them. And wine in dark brown gallon jugs with slowly expanding balloons stretched across the tops. All biding their time in the root cellar of course.

That must have been hard for you all to see. The one plus is that the house made way for farmland. We need more of that if it’s being used by local farmers, not corporations. I’m lucky in that my childhood home(s) are all still standing.

After he died the corner bar that my dad owned was turned into a parking lot. It was such a shock to see what was a huge part o his life leveled and gone like it was never there.

Thanks to Google we were able to look up old family homes and virtually stroll down the street.

The house I grew up in is still standing. I lived on a residential street in the suburbs of Chicago so not very historical or useful. We used to have a street lined with beautiful elm trees until I was about 16 or 17 or so. The Dutch Elm disease took them all. When I was about 17, I was weeding the garden in the side yard of the house and found 2 little maple tree seedlings. They each had only one leaf. I took the seedlings and planted them in the place where the elm trees had been. One of those trees was still standing the last time I drove by the house last year. It was 54 years old in September last year. That made me feel good.

I looked in Google maps for the house I lived in as a child. The neighbourhood had changed so much! The house is still there but I don’t know if I could go back. Just looking in Google maps was trauma inducing.

I have my childhood home in my head – together with my late parents and siblings.

I often dream of all of them/it and avoid to go where our house used to be.

When my Grandparents retired from their farm in North Dakota, the buyers worked the farmable land left the house to rot. It was sad to see the barn had collapsed and the house was falling apart. Never went back to see what was left.

Aw. Sorry for the tears. Although, you’re showing off your truly artistic capabilities today.

I feel you. I went to drive by my childhood house. I wanted to see my tree in the backyard. I lived in that thing! I loved it so much. Tree is gone. Made me so sad, but that hinge changed. I am close my eyes and be in the tree in my head in seconds though. I can do the same with my grandma and grandpa’s house. The last few times I was there, I intentionally paid attention to every detail. Scanning it all, storing everything in my brain. I can close my eyes and be there anytime. Feels real. Although all this is sad, I do keep myself in check by remembering who had it the worst, the Native Americans. Their homes have drastically changed way more than any way ours could have. :(