 We visited downtown Madison last week after a while away. Our traditional record store, toy store, and lunch spots are long gone. At the campus end of State Street, high-rise apartments have replaced the restaurants Husnus and Kabul. It isn’t like it used to be.
In happy childhood memories, I’m playing in the giant wasteland behind the family's modest backyard. Now a deep, manicured lawn meets that of its back-to-back neighbor the next street over, separated only by a white picket fence. I miss the overgrown playland. It’s not the way it was. Does one picture a favorite place as enduring before one met it and for months or years thereafter? Were its imperfections part of its charm? Does novelty feel like betrayal? Maybe students like to live in high-rises; maybe kids enjoy playing in big, tidy yards. These may be the memories they’ll cherish. We love places not just for their traits but for the memories we attach to them: exuberant youth or young adulthood, romance, healing, you name it. Change is the only constant, but the constancy of memory tugs at our hearts.
6 Comments
Doug Erickson
4/10/2023 07:24:38 am
As someone who works downtown and sees State Street almost daily, I've been mourning its "loss" ever since the pandemic. It seems so changed, so diminished from what it once was. But then, a couple of weeks ago I experienced it through the eyes of a friend visiting from out of town. He commented on its vibrancy and how much fun and excitement it offers for college students. It was a necessary corrective for me. It lives on, just different from what I once loved. 4/10/2023 07:08:17 pm
Doug, what a wonderful story! I probably need a first-time out-of-town visitor to provide a similar corrective. The campus end of State Street no longer seems to me to have any character. On the other hand, there are places Geoff mourns (how the lakeshore bike path used to be before Monona Terrace was built?) where I don't feel any loss at all, having moved there years after he did.
Christine DeSmet
4/11/2023 08:17:26 am
It's always interesting to go back for a visit, isn't it? I always have a touch of fear because I know I'll miss something that is now gone. Going back also reminds us of our own mortality--we all change and rebuild ourselves as time goes on, don't we? Staying fresh is the name of the game for ourselves and our surroundings. 4/11/2023 09:54:29 am
Indeed, the surroundings change and so do we. I remember as an adult going back into my old junior high building and being struck by how much smaller the lockers had become. Similarly, I had vivid memories of the towering totem poles in Stanley Park, Vancouver BC, during childhood visits to my grandparents. When I went back much later as an adult, the totem poles were still very nice but no longer nearly as tall as I remembered them.
Judy Childs Butler
4/21/2023 12:48:01 pm
Sarah, do you recall the enormous garden behind our house? Our dad grew all of the vegetables and some of the fruit we ate over the course of the entire year. Our summers were taken up with planting and harvesting, canning and freezing. There were many laugh-filled hours in our basement, peeling and stringing, husking and "nubbing". When our folks sold their property in 1972, the year I graduated from college, they sold it as two separate lots. Within a year, a house was sitting in our garden space. Our "cornucopia" has been gone for a half-century, but I'm still astonished/dismayed whenever I see that house sitting there. 4/24/2023 11:40:43 am
Yes, Judy, I remember it well! Especially in strawberry season. I recall you kids, and maybe sometimes me, getting paid five cents per box or bucket to pick strawberries when there were too many for one person to harvest. When I picture your father, I see him out among the growing vegetables. I didn't know a new house had taken over your garden space. Feels like a loss to me, too. Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI'm a historian who writes novels and literary nonfiction. My home base is Madison, Wisconsin.
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