Documenting our Landscape

Not withstanding the fact that not in the too distant past this roadside lunch room and, most likely gas station, thrived along a well trafficked highway, the income from which supported a number of people and their families, it is no more. For reasons that are unimportant today although once, perhaps, were at the forefront of many minds, this business closed its doors never to reopen again. One can just imagine the politics discussed over cups of coffee, the decisions made about what to plant, how to bale hay, funeral plans and so on, things that impacted the local residents even more than national headlines (unless the nation was at war in which case those discussions may have focused on how so-and-so is doing in Germany or Japan or Korea or Viet Nam, or Lebanon, or Somalia, or Iraq or consoling parents whose children perished in some foreign battlefield.) For those still alive, memories were formed within the walls of this abandoned lunch room; good times or bad it doesn’t matter. At one time in the not so distant past those who depended on this lunch room for a living couldn’t imagine it would close, left to rot and crumble along the highway for all who pass by to see. But here it is, paint pealing, timbers rotting for all to see along the highway that was once well traveled.