Cornfields

There's always another layer of used-to-be

My dad grew up on West High Avenue, at what was once the edge of town, in a big house with pine trees out back they planted after every Christmas.  By the time my brain came online, the house was gone, replaced with a Kwik Fill gas station, with a Dari Bar ice cream stand next door.  The trees were still there, a fully-grown windbreak, and he’d tell us the story every time we drove past them.

I was weirdly into gas stations as a kid (I think it was the spinning numbers on the rotary pumps), and I’ve always had a weakness in equal measure for deliberately misspelled brand names and chocolate-dipped vanilla soft serve cones.  His efforts to paint a picture of his childhood over what I saw with my eyes never landed with me.

Now I’m the one who can’t go back.