Hometown Pride by Thomas Kinkade
I have walked this road
From stroller to today
Witnessing the changes
My supermarket died
Yet the bowling alley stands
A streetlight by my high school
Wish it was there for me
Old signs still on the library
New signs on stores renamed
The surface of my hometown changes
Every solitary day
Does it make a difference?
I still see children playing on my block
Bikes whizzing by and laughter from the yards
I guess they’ll never know
The shoe store was a movie theater
But I’m sure changes will occur
Besides
This will always be my town
Where the diners never fall
The heart will never change
Which is all that matters
(This poem is dedicated to the supermarket I grew up going to. It closed last month and I finally walked over to it. All shuttered, but I could still see the cases inside. I got a lot of free cookies and balloons in that supermarket.)
Legends of Windemere 
You can feel the loss oozing out of this. Really nice work.
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Thanks. Wasn’t sure what I was going for on it. Loss sounds like a good one.
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That is all that really matters…
Amazing. You have really well captured the essence of a town and its growth/change over the years. 🙂
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Thanks. It came to me as I was walking and saw all the changes of my own town.
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Great work. You articulated a town evolving well. Cheers!
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Thanks. It’s funny how some people see that evolution as a devolution.
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Everything is relative haha which makes for a messy/awesome world of opinions and perspectives.
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True. Though, those young whippersnappers have no idea what they’re talking about. 😉
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You captured well a sentiment we all have at some point, that you can never go home. Home evolves and changes so quickly. This was beautiful Charles!
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Thanks. Though, I think you can still go home. It just won’t be the same on the surface.
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Great piece; having come from a small town that changed in ways similar to those you describe, I could feel this. Our town–particularly the local grocers and “mom and pop” stores–ended up shuttered due to the influx of big box stores, but that’s another story…
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This was a local franchise market, but it was the hub of a small outdoor mall. The other stores might not last very long, which has a lot of people down.
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Very nice! I applaud you for being able to write a poem about this! My parents had a boat I really loved and when they sold it, it was like they sold a part of my childhood. Good one Charles!
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Thanks. There have been a lot of changes around here the last few months and it finally drove itself home today when I took a walk.
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Great poem. Revisiting childhood places can be a bittersweet experience. My old neighborhood has changed a lot.
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My old neighborhood is my current one, so I’ve seen it change every time I move away and come back.
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Enjoyed this. reminded me of my hometown (Detroit) where every thing is gone
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I’ve never been to Detroit, but I’ve heard stories. Really sucks.
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Aw Charles, I feel your loss. I have witnessed the world change around me, the different shops taking place of the old ones, the greenery paved over to make way for more houses…which then get trashed by the people living there…its sad but we will always have those memories..they cant pave over them! xB
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I think I’m lucky that my block has remained relatively the same since I was a kid. Less trees due to the storms, but kids are still playing on the block.
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What a lovely poem! I’m sorry about the supermarket. I remember walking to a neighborhood market near my grandparents home when I was very young. It went out of business by the time I was in sixth grade, and I always missed it.
My hometown got its first stoplight a year or two ago. That was so strange. 🙂
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We keep hearing that they want to tear down the entire mall area to make some apartment buildings. Not sure it would work since there’s a Home Depot and another shopping center flanking this area. Who wants a Home Depot in the backyard?
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Ah…how this talks to me…every word of it reminds me of what I saw and felt when last I was in the States.
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This country is definitely changing every day. Not always in the good way.
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I’ll tell you, it seemed more human before…everything seems to be zoned…not many small business, what my brother-in-law calls “Moms and Pops”, big cities going down the drain…kind of scary it was. Though I loved Athens, Georgia…it seemed like going back many a year, but it’s a college town, so maybe that makes a difference.
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Mom & Pop stores are disappearing because of the big, cheap stores. Others are dying out because the towns are fading away. College towns tend to do better because of the influx of students.
Some days it’s like the entire thing is unraveling and those that could stop it are spending more time making it worse.
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Yeah, know what you mean…that was the feeling I got, unraveling. I was talking to one of my students the other day, who’d been in the States not long ago, he said he got the feeling that the community life is dying out…of course his big thing is that you can’t go sit in cafè and have a cappucino while talking to strangers about soccer, but he’s not far from wrong I guess.
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You can still go to a bar and talk to strangers about sports. I think that will always be found to some extent. The people change in community is that there’s more fear of the stranger. The media pounces on kidnapping and murder stories, which causes people to stay in their own world. It’s getting harder to find neighborhoods where the neighbors know each other.
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True… saw that too…not a good situation I’m thinking, even in small communities. It used to be that way in the big cities when I was growing up, remember my Aunt complaining about it, they lived in Chicago…but small towns, well, it just used to be different. Now some of them don’t even have a store anymore! Oooooo…don’t I sound the old granny type ;-|
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Not really. It’s true. We have another supermarket, but it’s not as big and they’re still getting used to the sudden influx of customers. Also, the walk to that place isn’t nearly as relaxing.
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