Wednesday, April 14, 2010

The Old Hometown

Judy and I spent last weekend in my hometown of Mexia, Texas, where we visited some old friends and checked out the downtown area, which looks a little like a bombed-out German town after WWII. The area out around the Super Wal-Mart is thriving, however. I took some pictures, of course. This one is of the back of the building that once housed Eubanks Hardware, a thriving business for many years. You can see the ghostly painted sign that shows the name of an even earlier business that inhabited the building, which is now vacant, like many of those downtown, at least the ones that haven't fallen down or been demolished.

2 comments:

Dan said...

Very evocative and genuinely touching. Thanks for sharing it.

Fred Blosser said...

"Nothin but the dead and dyin back in my little town..."

The 40-mile stretch of coal and chemical towns in West Virginia where I grew up in the '50s and '60s -- solid middle-class enclaves back then, up to and including the state capital -- is a saddening husk these days. Aging population, economy on life support, blocks of empty storefronts. I've seen a lot of the same on travels in other states too.