I was doing a little snooping about a favorite television series of mine last weekend. Shocker. Anyways, in my detailed searching I became increasingly curious if a certain exterior set that was used in the series still existed. After some top notch private investigating, picture comparing, and video analyzing, I found the very street! Thanks to modern technology, I was able to use Google maps street view. That thing is awesome by the way. It's like being there and walking on the streets where the cars drive because you can't actually do that. Weird. But cool. Anywho... I clicked the ole street view and instantly felt my heart sink just a wee bit. The building was gone. Vamos! Goodbye! Not there! Without a trace. Not even a brick left behind to show that it was there. Well, there was the fire hydrant and telephone pole that helped me identify the right location. Needless to say I was shocked. I mean, its stupid really. It's just a building from a show. But it was real to me. And in its place is a parking lot. A parking lot of all things! Tell me how that's better for the economy, eh? Okay, yeah, I'm grasping at straws now. But I really didn't expect it to be gone. Well, it's been a couple decades and all. But don't people have any respect for sentimentality these days? I guess not.
I got over it of course. Especially once I solidified the difference between fiction and reality in my mind. Granted half of my brain space is reserved for the fictional world as a writer. I have no shame about it either. Haha. But really... After the fact, it got me to thinking... (shocker)
Time passes so quickly these days while ignorance flourishes. My generation was in danger of losing a grasp on the past. But dear Lord I fear for the generation coming after me! Gives me shivers just to think how ignorant of the past they will be if we don't step up and make sure they know about the past. Without a television show, no one would know that a building used to sit on a certain lot on that certain street to serve as a source of entertainment for tons of folks a couple decades ago. I bet people drive past that parking lot everyday and never know about what was produced there. Not that it's necessarily important for them or anyone to know. (Although I contest that statement heartily) But just the fact that one building played an important role in one show and now is gone for forever, never to be rebuilt there. It brings to mind how much actual important history took place on your street in 1903. What cabin sat just a block away from your house and burned to the ground in 1873 when a prairie fire swept over the 200 acres of rich farmland your lavish subdivision now sits on? Who stood underneath that oak tree you chopped down last week in your back yard and proposed to their sweetheart just to end up heartbroken when the draft came up during WWII? Did that patch of land you planted your mailbox in two days ago once play host to an Apache spear as it marked its territory among new settlers of the west two centuries ago? Did the property that freeway you traveled this morning once shelter a wagon train as it headed west?
In the name of progress, what used to be is no longer. Yet with a little work and use of our God-given intellect, perhaps we can remember the places and what happened at those places in our country so many years ago and give it the reverence and remembering it deserves.
