A Thought Over a Cup of Coffee

There’s a baseball diamond across the street from our motor home, complete with night lights, a new electronic scoreboard and state-of-the-art sound system. It has been put together over the past year over the remnants of the old ball field, left behind by the 2007 flood in this small Kansas town.

It’s a kind of symbol to me of the resilience people here in the Heartland have. What was a mud and mold-strewn park and neighborhood just 12 months ago is now well on its way to recovery. There were numerous businesses wiped out by the flood, and several whole neighborhoods had to be torn down. Now, where we walked or rode last year looking at the sad remains of peoples’ homes, some of which had undoubtedly been in families for generations, there are steps and slabs, and streets making a kind of giant map on the ground. What will end up there is still a mystery. It should be interesting to come back in another year or two and see what grows there. One way or another, places and the people who live in them recover and move on…sometimes replacing what was there, and sometimes creating a new reality.

That’s one of the things about this part of the country the metro types with their Urban Renewal, and hundred-thousand dollar condos don’t seem to get. When change happens in the Heartland, it can be drastic; it can be life-altering. But it happens naturally most of the time…not just because there’s a profit to be made.

Just a thought, as I look out my window at the new ball field, and listen to the afternoon pickup game.

Blog at ya later,
-Geezerguy