When I last visited the town where I spent my teenage years
in Idaho, I stayed at a motel downtown and planned my morning walk to pass by a
couple places where we had lived, including the house I lived in while
attending junior and senior high school.
As I turned the corner, expecting to see the little, modest house I lived in as a 13 year old, I encountered a parking lot for the Mormon
Church. The house was gone, and I
somehow felt cheated. How dare they
dispose of an artifact from my youth!
But, of course, it was hardly a monument or memorial site, just a house
with little meaning to developers other than what the current market would
support. I have a few photos of the
place but otherwise it only exists as a memory.
I think of this when I’m in neighborhood meetings where
residents are clamoring for the destruction of dwellings no longer occupied and
deteriorating, dragging down the value of others’ homes in the area, people
argue. But I think, “Will the little
house that’s been replaced by a vacant lot down the street be the encounter of
a visitor trying to revisit their youth?”
When do we value slices of the “built environment,” and does
the “market” always decide? Today is September 11th, and my Facebook
“news feed” is filled with photos recollecting the Twin Towers from every
angle. I remember when I went to the top
with my mother on a trip long ago, and when I last had a chance to go again
with Charlie and Angie the summer before the terrorist attack, but we deferred
the opportunity since we had already gone to the top of the Empire State
Building and had limited time.
After World War II, much of Europe was in ruins, but, as
tourists visiting those delightful old cities today know, much of the past was
rebuilt, using as much of the original structures as was feasible and
duplicating others, almost as if using the original blue prints. Now, you can argue that this was certainly a
wise decision for a couple reasons. All
those tourists in London, Berlin, Dresden and Paris do not come to see new
housing developments. They want to see
the past, rebuilt or not. So the
decision to remember by replicating the past was a good economic decision. Second, these cities, and countries, are the
homes of authentic cultures whose inhabitants want to retain, sustain and
support even as they live in a fast-moving time. So, the decision to rebuild this “built
environment” makes sense both economically and culturally.
But what about the built environment in America today? We certainly protect key places by
proclaiming them national historic sites, or even local ones. But how much thought do we give this and is
it only found in the big cities?
Late this summer, I built a road trip around a conference
that began in Chicago. While there,
members of the Urban Communication Foundation took a beautifully-narrated boat
trip to witness the celebrated architecture that city has retained. The trip that followed took me to Wisconsin,
Minnesota, South Dakota, and Nebraska. I
had lived in two of those places and visited the others. In addition to seeing old friends, I tested
my memory of the “built” and “natural” environments not seen in many a
year. I have the fewest memories of Wisconsin,
so I’ll have to skip those stops for comparisons. But I spent three years living near the
campus of the University of Minnesota while I got my doctorate, so I should
remember a lot of that “built environment.”
I had not been back to the campus but once since leaving in 1975, so a
lot of water has passed under the bridge.
And my memories were of a 20 something for the most part, not of a
child. Thank God for GPS, or I would
have had trouble navigating around the university campus. They did not change the basic quad around
which one of the libraries, a major hall used in some graduations and the
student union were located. But outside
of that, the landscape had changed dramatically. I knew that Murphy Hall, where I had a grad
student office and spent most of my time, had been gutted and rebuilt so that
change was expected. And I walked over
to Dinky Town, where I had an apartment in the student ghetto, discovering that
only the McDonald’s looked familiar in the retail environment. Nothing monumental or memorial to retain
here, though the redevelopment was quaint and comfortable, much more inviting
that I recall from my student days.
After a stop to visit with friends in western Minnesota from
my Peace Corps days, I pushed my driving to spend the night in Rapid City,
South Dakota. The last time I visited
this city, I was a child of perhaps six or seven years old. And I had only a couple memories, including
one in the city. I remember visiting a Dinosaur
Park with huge animals made out of concrete.
Somewhere I have a photo of my brother and me sitting on the head of a three-horned
dinosaur, Triceratops. As I drove in I
noted the elongated head of what looked like the largest dinosaur on the top of
one of the mountains framing the town, an Apatosaurus . So this memory still had a physical referent. The GPS didn’t give directions but I found my
way up to the park, discovering it had been established in 1936, so it was
fairly “new” when I visited around 1950 or 1951. It’s still fun, and I was pleased that this
memory had been respected. I guess concrete
and steel weathers well, and its potential for tourists persisted. So, one memory checked, I moved on, stopping
at Mt. Rushmore, where the faces haven’t changed but the viewing area has been
modernized to serve a much larger volume of visitors. I’ve always thought the U.S. Park Service did
a splendid job, and they have here as well.
I’m not sure how accurate my childhood memory was since in the
intervening years I also saw “North by Northwest” and have seen countless
images of the same area. But it’s
comforting. Next stop, Chief Crazy
Horse, the mountain-size project where a family is carving out an image of the
chief on a horse. When my family visited
here more than a half century ago, I recall little more than a small gift shop
and a little dirt being scrapped off of the mountain. I remember my dad questioning if they were
going to get much done. Now, the shop
has been turned into a major destination with a museum, video, shops and
restaurants, and the face and head of the chief can clearly be seen. I’m sure I won’t be alive to see the
completion, so someone else will have to test their 2012 memory against that
image some day. My route on to Nebraska
took a detour to test another image by driving through Custer State Park. As a child I remember our family coming up on
a clearing and seeing a huge herd of buffalo.
Our photos of the site were lost, but I thought I’d see if I’d come
across any buffalo this time. Now the
park rangers know how to track the herd and can tell you where to spot them,
which I did. The herds looked smaller
this time around, but it was still fun. This time my memory of the “natural
environment” checked out, more or less.
Next stop, my birth place in western Nebraska. I’ve been back twice in 20 years and had the
good fortune to cruse the countryside checking out sites verified by a cousin
from the Jeffres side of the family and another relative from the McCracken
side, both equally knowledgeable about where things “used to exist.” Anyone who thinks that the countryside is
static, only the cities changing, is wildly off the mark. For the most part, almost everything from my
childhood in the country has been replaced or removed. But I did pass by the sites of homes where I once
visited both sets of grandparents, the landscape where my great grandfather
homesteaded, and the handful of houses where I had lived, including the
Middlestead place where ol’ Doc Palmer came from town to deliver me. Moomaw Corner, the equivalent of a corner
store in the city, was completely gone.
The country school where I went to kindergarten was part of a corn
field. And the little town of Bayard
where I went to the first grade is now largely a bedroom community with a main
street of empty store fronts. If I
remember my geography theories correctly, settlements in the pioneer days were
located about every seven miles or so, the distance a horse traveled in a
day. When cars came in, they didn’t go
that much faster but certainly eliminated the need for many stops. I recall going to dances with my parents at a
little town called Minatare, and it was a considerable drive, as was a trip to
see a movie at a drive in closer to Scottsbluff. My cousin said she recalled going 25 miles an
hour or thereabouts because the roads were so poor and the cars shook so
much. Now, of course, it’s a modern
highway and takes no time at all. So the
build environment of the past doesn’t serve the same economic purpose and must
be “adjusted” to survive. That often
means it’s abandoned or demolished. And
with it go the memories of a childhood.
I left Nebraska as a child, so I didn’t see the little
changes through the years that led to what exists today. Those who stayed know the history and can
reflect with context. I think about my
time in Cleveland and the changes I’ve witnessed, and how the “built
environment” has changed, or not changed here.
I’ve certainly seen lots of institutions disappear, largely for economic
reasons, but I also see the persistence and survival of much of the community
because so many appreciate the values and history represented by such
substantial buildings and institutions as the West Side Market, now celebrating
its centennial, and churches dating back even further. But I suspect we’re tearing down lots of
“modest houses” that are the memories of many childhoods.
At some point, you realize that your memories are all that
survive of chunks of your past (at least for those of us born before the era of
Facebook). You can “go home” again, but
it might be a parking lot.
Leo W. Jeffres
Sept. 11, 2012.
