The Washington times., 1931-09-12
True to Type
HOW DEAR TO NY HEART
ARE THE SCENES OF
MY CHILDHOOD
nv GILRERT SELDES-

IF it hadn't been for the railroad station, should
have found the place at ALL But there it Stood
long, low and dapidated, resisting patheticaly the
motor march of progress-so knew we had to turn to
the right. After that, easy The village wanted
see for the unsubsanal that had been born
there Law several miles away from the main highway
between two towns, and the moment we branched of
this highway, leaving it and its parallel railway oennd
we back in the America OF 19O5
No More Forest
The shock was all the greater because the whole
.1y had changed The five miles from Temple to Rose
dale had been when last them merely dirt road
. through forest. Now they, were suburban: good
secondclas paved motor road their length and on
each side the usual hot dog STANDS, little shops
Villas and bungaows power lines ran all the way and
telephone wires; fire plugs visible at intervals
Behind the little houses lay gardens behind them fields
and the distance patches of woods all that remained
of the forest.
Five minutes after we turned off this road, the
tryside was as it had always been cluster of homes
and stores half mile from the depot and the rest,
farms The houses Stood badly battered by tlme
needing paint; the telephone extended a mile IN no
electric light wires were to be seen: the roads were
gravel and sand huge truck slowed toward us; as it
passed, with in the ditch, we read the name OF a
manufacturer of the kind of gas which is delivered IN
drums where pipes are laid. People looked at the
motor car-not because they had seen one before
but because they knew all the cars of the negh0orhood
(half dozen, perhaps) and this was stranger
Motor Changes
Now Rosedale the railway point, and Rosevie the
outlying village, exactly Of kind 20 years ago.
The fact that had the railroad and the other nad
difference IN lives
ties The factories. which the farmers depended
for winter work both lay miles from the depot
two general stores existed at Rosedale and two IN Rose
vile.
Temple six miles away served by two railroads.
commercial and manufacturing center, because it was
older had been we'll planned had been directed by good
intelligent because the railroad had come there
Fifty years ago. perhaps, the coming OF the locomotive
had meant something in the life of community twenty
years ago it seemed to nothing And overnight the
motor car had made two identical villages totally different
from the otherseparating them by ten years Tor
each mile between them.
No More Hills
It wasn't, for me, emotional pilgrimage ana the
smaness which strikes the revisitor of childhood scenes
did not affct with melancholy Among the charming
rural people, of nature and toll one had been found
who coveted the land around the house in which we Ved
so year after left it he had burned the house down.
to reduce the cost of the property Except for tall
hickory tree, nothing remained for to be emotional
about and this left free to myself with the tricks
which memory and motor cars can play. For the car
went near to walk as it could yet the distance BE-
home and school covered in five mlnutes-t
had taken full hour thought and the way trlng hills
leveed out was miraculous.
. BackWater
The place seemed to backwater-which is exactly
what thought it when was about ten years old;
it seemed unenerprising- exactly dying, but not
wholly alive. was pleased with my departure from it
as had been years ago. And wondered whether the
song suggests Childhood ends between ten and thirteen
in theory it is the happies time of fe In practice
it is time of dreadful Embellishments, of profound (and
useess) Worries of embarrassmens which, unfortunately
feet health. suspect that the last of these in world
given to Indigestion and patent medicines, gives the
touch of regret to all thoughts of childhood suspect
also that when you say the word childhood to most people,
the image it calls up is something delicious to eat To
have perfect digestion and to be eager to get up the
moment wakes-these the conditions of the kind
of happiness which childhood possesses Perhaps is as
good as any other kind.