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 influence on the scene to describe.
I'm remembering a very, very profound scene I saw once where you would have had to bring in other life experiences and comparisons to judge what was happening. A woman dressed in fine clothing, a silver wig, grandmother type jewelry, was berating a ratty, homeless looking husband while he sat in front of his wood stove in his second hand store along Highway 99.
They had obviously been people who prospered before the building of I 5, when Highway 99 was part a vibrant economic route serving its part as the part of the Pan American Highway. You see I 5 impacted businesses along 99. Even today you see relics of old motels and gas stations that prospered from the Pan American Highway traffic. The vibrant economy, the every day hustling and bustling that happened in these businesses along 99 was now defunct as traffic all moved to big business industrial corridor, I 5, where only the very rich could afford real estate along 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 very rich, probably, from selling off his land to apartment builders who now dominated the area, two decades later after the I-5 corridor opened up.
The old man had a limp. He preferred the comfort of the wood stove to keeping up the store or spending time with his wife. She was berating him for not going someplace with him. He ignored her.
It was an awkward scene, for me as a customer, 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 practice and was selling off his final items as a well dressed wife was 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.
