Replaced

Lumbering bulldozers grind and rip trees and shrubs from the empty lots, competing with gas fumes, the noise of trucks, and honking horns on the busy thoroughfare. Two gracious houses, once precious home to families, but long abandoned and fallen into disrepair, smashed to kindling, hauled away for scrap Just up the grassy hill behind our senior residence, we’ll watch another commercial business go up. Recent car wash on the corner, now another bank? Fast food? Alongside our apartments, in the past, a Christmas tree farm, sweet smelling pines replaced with roads and new homes, manicured lawns and two-, sometimes three-car garages. Countryside eaten away by ever-increasing population with insatiable desire for the shiny, new, bigger and better, for the quick and easy, immediate convenience. Afternoon teas exchanged for socially beneficial cocktail parties. Casual-, even sports-wear, in the finest restaurants, rudeness and boorish comments the norm, “Gracious” suffering a slow death.