Urban Blight

I make the drive to the country in just over an hour, cursing the interstate at every mile and being grateful to finally make my way onto a backroads highway.  The road bends and sways like a tapestry, the trees are in full fall color and the sun is warm.  It's a pretty and peaceful drive past horse farms and elegant homes on several acres, cattle grazing idly in open pastures and man made ponds complete with ducks skimming lightly on the water's surface.  Despite its lack of conveniences, there are still moments I miss the country quiet and the rural isolation and long for a life free from city noise and city-fied people.

It all changes at the city limits when the landscape turns urban.  Block after block of ruined properties, empty and neglected houses, shabby businesses and trashed lots replace the pretty countryside.  What a sad, burned out, abandoned little town, I think.  If it was ever here at all, quaint has come and gone.

On the courthouse lawn, two makeshift stages have been built and a half dozen rows of folding chairs set up to one side of the confederate soldier statue.  Vendor booths selling cotton candy, chili dogs, homemade jewelry and tee shirts are set up on all four sides of the closed streets.  An animal adoption booth has erected a low and not very substantial chicken wire fence at one end - it encloses three or four adoptable mixed breed dogs - but no one pays any attention to the emaciated stray hound wandering just down the street by the open door'ed sidewalk cafe.  Musicians are doing sound checks and praying for no technical glitzes, a number of them shout out a welcome to me and I wave.  It's a long way to have come for a sparse crowd but the day is young and perhaps, like in Field of Dreams, people will come.

I take my pictures, visit with my musician friends, stuff myself with chili cheese dogs and at the end of the day head back on the road, driving into the sun and away from the urban blight.