It's the same, but different, no really it is. When kids walked to and from school I crossed this bridge at least twice a day, sometimes on a dare when the river was in flood stage , more than twice. And was scared as hell to do so, but I did it.
The railroad station and yard were on one side and a restaurant which is still there, and some other buildings which are not were on the other. there was also a store that sold comics and the best olives in brine I have ever eaten. It has been so many years, some things i can barely remember.
I
As far as I cam remember it was in the early 60's that passenger trains quit stopping here, and i can't remember any activity in the freight yard since they put through a huge power line in the late 70's, but trains still run through here. Decorated with the works of spray paint artists, who's
skills are quickly painted over, too bad because some of their works are REALLY worth seeing and appreciating.
Over years in fact decades of disuse the station house fell into disrepair, the one at the other end of tow fared much better, I think it is a restaurant. over the years, there were plenty of rumors about people buying it,but no one ever did, and gradually the windows were broken and the portico began to come down, I was sure that one day it would not be be there when I drove past, there is was looking sorta like the old days.. I am so glad I was wrong.
However the beautiful and well kept up mansion on the hill behind it is gone!!!! to make way for a truck by-pass, as is the row of little houses on the street nearby. Many times we would walk that street to buy candy or get groceries for Mom, and of course we always stopped to splash in the horse trough, at least until the city removed it. That street with the almost unpronounceable name, was named after the family who built and lived in the old mansion. A street. like the narrow road and pathways over the hill, connected two rival parts of town. One where the tannery and brickyard workers lived in their neat rows of company housing, and the section where the the more affluent workers from the chemical plant, which used to discharge pigments into the river and color the water, and sometimes ice and snow brilliant hues, lived in mostly newly built houses.
I have long forgotten the correct name of this hill, which is being turned into bypass, but the name I knew it by was Meditation Mountain. I used to take walks along the narrow roadbed and many paths that crisscrossed it, and also connected the two sections of town. Collecting bits o colored sandstone and fossils, or whatever i cam across, including once a seashell, and another time a jawbone. The youngest girl in the family next door and i would pick berries and just roam around, sometime we saw other people and sometimes not, she called it Meditation Mountain, and we often sat on a large rock which gave us a beautiful view of the town, she would tell me stories about everything from girl stuff tot own history to the headless horseman who terrorised the village her mother was born in, and me too.
So as i see it it is all still the same, only different.
