Sometimes the scope is so large I can't describe it to you in words.
Events and data from other times and places affect the situation and its
difficult if not impossible to measure the influences on this scene at an
old second hand store where an elderly husband and wife were arguing.
The woman dressed in her Sunday best, silver wig, grandmother type
jewelry, current fashions, was berating a ratidly dressed husband, while
he sat in front of his wood stove in his second hand store along Highway
99 down by Midway, WA. It was his regular spot of comfort as he ran his
store and waited on the few customers.
The store might have prospered before the Interstate 5 bypassed the old
Hwy 99 route by Midway. Highway 99 was a vibrant economic route along
the Pan American Highway. Even today you see relics of old motels and gas
stations that once prospered from the Pan American Highway traffic, now
rusty, moldy and falling down. The vibrant economy, the every day
hustling and bustling that happened in these businesses along 99, that
were once intregal to the local economy, were now defunct as traffic all
moved to the big business industrial corridor, I 5, where only the very
rich could afford real estate along one of the off ramps to I 5. This
second hand store had once been a thriving mercantile along the Highway 99
route and the old man sitting by the stove was not poor, but possibly very
rich, probably, from selling off his land to apartment builders who now
dominated the area, two decades after the I-5 corridor opened up.
The old man had a walking cane. He limped when his wife nagged him to
get something from behind the broken down counter. He preferred the
comfort of the wood stove to keeping up the store or spending time with
his wife. Then she was berating him for not going someplace with him. He
ignored her.
It was an awkward scene, for me as not so much a customer but an
explorer of old relics, in this now run down second hand store, with
unpainted wood siding and shelves that were ready to fall down. A
lifetime of treasures. This once shrewd business man was following his
daily routine and was selling off his final items and a well dressed wife
who seemed anxious to spend his money. Their lifetime of hard work had
come to this. He didn't care, she was frustrated and unhappy. The chasm
between these two was insurmountable, it seemed.
The scene somehow stuck with me over the years. Somehow it seemed to
capture so much more than an old husband and wife arguing. They probably
had more money at the time than most, but they were unhappy. For me,
these were my haunts. I grew up not so far away. I had traveled up and
down this stretch of 99 since my youth, shopped there, ate there, played
there. The changes I saw from the I-5 transition, the greed from the real
estate sell off, the shift of commerce from small business to big as only
fortune 500 companies could afford space by a freeway off-ramp. The
landmarks changed. Fancy new buildings replaced old. They were bigger,
less inviting, except for our retail trade. Routes were sealed off. Bike
routes we took as kids were fenced off, pastures where horses roamed were
now multi-use malls and offices. The people changed. There's more of
course. I've attempted to write this scene down several times as it
somehow seems to paraphrase the reality or the changing of our local
culture, commerce and haunts. 'That's progress' it's always dismissed as.
'Things change'.
