Knocked down and paved over...

Wednesday January 3, 2007

Ok, now that I have gotten my writing cap back on I can get this thing updated.

The holidays were great, I got everything I wanted and spent some good time with my family in Arizona. My husband and I went traipsing along memory lane while we were there. The places we used to live have changed so much that we could barely recognize them. Where there used to be empty desert fields are now housing developments, strip malls, McDonald's, stores and just about everything else. Phoenix and Tucson are no longer discernible from each other, the suburbs blend into the metropolis, and there is almost no desert left! I remember driving my Dad's '85 Chevy Cavalier out into the desert and riding around in it with my brother and friends. All those roads are paved now and there are houses where there used to be cactus. I remember when you drove past a certain street there was nothing but desert that stretched out in front of you...not anymore. Now it's TGI Fridays on the corner there, Bed Bath & Beyond on the corner here, and every single hotel chain represented everywhere. Bell Road, Glendale AZ is a perfect example. There used to be absolutely nothing beyond the Loop 101 except a long and barren expanse of sand and cacti...now, like my Mom says, if you can't find a place to shop, eat, or sleep on Bell you need to get your eyes checked. I can't believe how much the place has expanded.

And my husband's old neck of the woods was no better. They have all kinds of shops and restaurants now, and the streets have been paved and traffic lights installed. More houses have been erected, right into the mountains where he used to hike with his childhood buddies. There used to be only one main road that took you out to his area...now there are at least half a dozen.

It saddens me to think about how much has changed. We were rowdy kids back then and did things we probably should have gotten caught for but never did, but the kids there now don't even have the opportunity to go romping around in the desert in a jacked-up Ford pickup or an oil-leaking carburetor buzzer because the state is putting some kind of building on every available patch of desert sand there is! They've even gone so far in previous years as to knock down a mountain to put up housing. I cherish memories like this: riding out to the middle of the desert to test my driving skills, getting jostled in the cab of a pickup as we tried to find every rut in the road, dragging shopping carts around by the bumper of said pickup and then returning them to the cart line of the store we found them at, hiking up a mountain just to say you did it and then trying to run back down without breaking your neck. Stupid stuff that kids do in their spare time while their parents aren't looking. The state of Arizona has paved over, erected restaurants and houses on, and knocked down those past times. It's so sad...

I'm ever so glad Texas is such a huge state...they can't build fast enough for Texas to face the same over-run fate that Arizona has.