Monday, August 21, 2006

Going Home Again, Part I: Is this Progress?



Top: Front view, the
original house today,
refurbished.

Bottom: Side view,
showing the addition.


On Sunday, I decided to take a closer look at my old farm home on the outskirts of Whitewater, Wisconsin. I knew that it had been turned into student housing many years ago, so I assumed that the house I remember as both beautiful and shabby was gone.

The house still stands on a curve in the road. From the west, the front looks beautiful: much the same, but refurbished quite attractively. The trees are not the ones that were there fifty years ago, but there are trees, as well as flowers. Of course the barn and other farm outbuildings are gone, replaced by new streets and small apartment houses.

Were this the only possible view, the house would seem to be a well-preserved version of the house I grew up in, but then there are the north, south, and east sides. There, a huge, box-like apartment building is attached, with multiple garages facing south. I suppose all this is progress, but my old home is gone.

Copyright 2006 by Marlys Marshall Styne
Photos by the author

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