I've come to learn, but not accept, that change springs up in irritating ways with little to no warning. Once it starts there is no turning back. Be glad (I guess) that your neighborhood won't include a data center, or a man-camp in progress due to the construction of the data center. Or a 600 acre granite mining operation, where a 20 acre granite mining operation had been in play. The above examples are currently in Wyoming, but the limestone mining operation just along the trout hatchery road here is appalling. One has to either a) learn to anticipate that these things will happen and thus be unsurprised, or b) pull up stakes and find someplace else. Both of these options are increasingly difficult. I guess that's why people who can afford it spend much of their time traveling, or living temporary lives in semi-permanent places. But the hearing aid option thing is a good idea, too.
Heartbreaking for me to have land developed here in the South. No regard for wildlife, loss of old forest, drainage isn't even a thought. Just all greed.
The farm pond caper: I climbed into the bulldozer's cab, and in those pre-computerized days pushed the start button. The engine started! Pulled back a lever with my right hand: the blade lifted! Pushed a lever with my left hand: the dozer lurched forward and the engine stalled. Messed around with other controls and learned that the accelerator was the opposite of a car; press it down with your foot and the engine slows, let it up and the engine accelerates. I played with this dangerous toy about a half hour, pushed some sand and gravel about 20 feet, and shut down before I damaged anything or killed myself. I hoped to someday become a heavy equipment operator but unfortunately went to college and was dragged into a life of writing (per my post "One trick pony"). Oh for what might have been...
When I was much younger, my aunt/uncle and cousins lived in such a neighborhood. It was almost rural - the Western far edge of Cleveland. Avon Lake. Then, almost overnight, they were building dozens of houses. The cousins and I would wander through them (after the contractors were gone for the day) and wonder what they were going to look like, who was going to live there. One of the cousins took a poop somewhere in what was going to be a bathroom. We knew if we were ever caught, they'd hang us to make proper examples. They eventually shoo'd us off the site and threatened to call the parents, but they never linked us to the poop. Today I could drive through and it looks like everything else. Civilized bushes, civilized trees, houses packed as far as you want to drive. When I go to Ohio, I see the same thing. High Street is no longer the drunken, merry carnival it used to be. They completely stripped the entire street, from one end of campus to the other, and replaced the pissy, redwood bars I remember so well with multi-story condos - all glass and chrome. Buy one for your son or daughter, and when they graduate, either keep it and lease it out, or sell it for a nice profit. All this shit is sad.
When I returned to the hometown of my youth and wandered over to the baseball park (we failed athletes must repent, repent, repent) I discovered there were 12 immaculately groomed baseball fields where once the four ragged diamonds of my youth had been, where we played endless pickup games all summer..The 12 new fields are chained and locked with KEEP OUT signs posted. No wonder Latin American kids now dominate Major League Baseball.
I've come to learn, but not accept, that change springs up in irritating ways with little to no warning. Once it starts there is no turning back. Be glad (I guess) that your neighborhood won't include a data center, or a man-camp in progress due to the construction of the data center. Or a 600 acre granite mining operation, where a 20 acre granite mining operation had been in play. The above examples are currently in Wyoming, but the limestone mining operation just along the trout hatchery road here is appalling. One has to either a) learn to anticipate that these things will happen and thus be unsurprised, or b) pull up stakes and find someplace else. Both of these options are increasingly difficult. I guess that's why people who can afford it spend much of their time traveling, or living temporary lives in semi-permanent places. But the hearing aid option thing is a good idea, too.
We are reshaping our world to become Mordor.
Heartbreaking for me to have land developed here in the South. No regard for wildlife, loss of old forest, drainage isn't even a thought. Just all greed.
Oh, I may have known that uncle with the pond.
The farm pond caper: I climbed into the bulldozer's cab, and in those pre-computerized days pushed the start button. The engine started! Pulled back a lever with my right hand: the blade lifted! Pushed a lever with my left hand: the dozer lurched forward and the engine stalled. Messed around with other controls and learned that the accelerator was the opposite of a car; press it down with your foot and the engine slows, let it up and the engine accelerates. I played with this dangerous toy about a half hour, pushed some sand and gravel about 20 feet, and shut down before I damaged anything or killed myself. I hoped to someday become a heavy equipment operator but unfortunately went to college and was dragged into a life of writing (per my post "One trick pony"). Oh for what might have been...
Sounds less than delightful.
When I was much younger, my aunt/uncle and cousins lived in such a neighborhood. It was almost rural - the Western far edge of Cleveland. Avon Lake. Then, almost overnight, they were building dozens of houses. The cousins and I would wander through them (after the contractors were gone for the day) and wonder what they were going to look like, who was going to live there. One of the cousins took a poop somewhere in what was going to be a bathroom. We knew if we were ever caught, they'd hang us to make proper examples. They eventually shoo'd us off the site and threatened to call the parents, but they never linked us to the poop. Today I could drive through and it looks like everything else. Civilized bushes, civilized trees, houses packed as far as you want to drive. When I go to Ohio, I see the same thing. High Street is no longer the drunken, merry carnival it used to be. They completely stripped the entire street, from one end of campus to the other, and replaced the pissy, redwood bars I remember so well with multi-story condos - all glass and chrome. Buy one for your son or daughter, and when they graduate, either keep it and lease it out, or sell it for a nice profit. All this shit is sad.
You can't go home again.
When I returned to the hometown of my youth and wandered over to the baseball park (we failed athletes must repent, repent, repent) I discovered there were 12 immaculately groomed baseball fields where once the four ragged diamonds of my youth had been, where we played endless pickup games all summer..The 12 new fields are chained and locked with KEEP OUT signs posted. No wonder Latin American kids now dominate Major League Baseball.
Oh God, this makes me sad. I'm sure you bought the house thinking you'd have a bit of nature, at least for a while. Ugh.