Childhood Sites Revisited, Part I

While in Easton for my great-aunt’s funeral in late May, I took advantage of the visit to go around to see old haunts.  It confirmed my view of Easton as a slightly desperate place that’s still not yet recovered from the 1980s, with signs of some life and hope.

On driving into Wilson Boro on Northampton Street, I was surprised to see the bank at 22d Street, long a fixture of this main street through town, had been shuttered; its sign broken out, and its yard littered with weeds.  The Shell station across the street likewise was shuttered, and many of the other homes and businesses along Northampton seemed untouched, unimproved, in the last thirty years.

Driving up the hill of 18^th Street, which seemed so much less steep than it did when I was younger, I was pleased to see the hair salon and the Broken Spoke bike shop were still there.  Parking at the corner of 18th and Fairview, I regretted that the Howard-Verna store, where I had snuck down to buy so many Tastykake blueberry pies as a boy, had closed, its blue sign pole barren and the building forlorn.

However, I was cheered to see 1825 Fairview, my grandparents Smith’s place; the new owners had installed a bright garden in front of the porch, and a lantern light on a pole at the end of their sidewalk; next door, at Mary Walters’ old home, a young child’s plastic play-house sat on the front yard.  These signs of new life and renewal were welcomed and warming on a difficult day.

Next I drove past the old Dixie Cup plant, a continuing symbol both of the town and of the town’s neglect and inability to move forward.  The stories-tall cup on the roof—the sign of the town that my sister and I would always compete to see first when driving to Nana and Pappap’s—shows streaks of rust and is in sore need of a paint job.  The windows on the plant remain shattered, advertising its abandonment to the ages; my grandmother would be ashamed to see the state of the building in which she spent her career.

Off to find my other grandparents’ home at 2416 Sycamore Street.  I started by trying to come from behind it, up the old alley that I remember driving down with my Pappap Kleppinger in his tan Rambler, and turned up two wrong ones instead.  Giving up, I turned onto the next street—which I soon discovered was the old alley, apparently widened into a named street.  Suddenly I found myself at my grandparents’ old garage, with the same wooden doors and the same rough stone blocks, and a view into their old back yard.  My grandmother’s rose bushes, that she loved so much, are long gone, but she would perhaps be pleased to see the azalea bushes in full bloom there instead.

Driving around to the front, on Sycamore, I saw that new gardens are a theme for my grandparents’ old homes: the concrete walk out front had been chiseled out and a small garden, bright with spring flowers, adorned the front of the home.  The front of the home seemed much the same as always; however, I noticed the front door had been replaced over the past couple of years, as it was still fairly recently that the weathered bronze plaque on the door engraved “The Kleppingers” was still there.  No more; one more sign of how things have moved on.

Having seen the last of these touchstones of youth, I stopped for lunch at the Burger King on 25^th Street—the one we used to nag our parents to take us to at a time when there was none in South Burlington.  Sated and more than a little melancholy, I then pointed the Lexus westward on 22 to begin the trip home.  I wonder if I’ll ever see these sites again.  But certainly, they'll never be the same again.