Another One Down

There’s a lot of construction going on around town. The old building of one car dealerships has been torn down and they’re in the process of rebuilding. Presumably it will be larger and without the same, early twentieth century appearance.

The phased construction of the new high school seems to be moving right along, too- at least judging by the huge dirt piles I can see in the distance, whenever I drive by.

And they’re doing some type of major construction at a gas station down the road from me. At first it looked like they were only replacing the underground tanks, but now I’m not sure what's going on. Next to this gas station stood an old, ugly, unoccupied building. I’m sure this building had long ago been a gas station as well, but that was before my time. I only knew it as a taxi cab company.

This wasn't one of those taxi cab companies that operated with a fleet of shiny yellow, cookie cutter-like vehicles. Their fleet consisted of two, maybe three vehicles- at least one of which always seemed to be a large, rusting out old station wagon. The station wagon, along with the other, even older vehicles, each had a magnetic sign on the side which proclaimed it to be a taxi. Without the sign, it would have been a natural assumption that any of those vehicles were waiting for the annual demolition derby.

The vehicles didn’t detract from the look of the old building, but they didn’t enhance it either. It all just blurred into the same overall muddy look, like some old sepia photograph of some old eyesore.

But the taxicab company stopped operating several years ago and the building has sat idle ever since.

Whenever I drove by the building, which was often, it always looked to me like it was so out of place. It seemed to me that it would have looked more natural, if that's the right word for it, sitting on the outskirts of a long dead boom-town out in the middle of a desert somewhere- with nothing around but sand, cacti and maybe the occasional tumbleweed rolling by.

Whenever I would drive by, usually one of the kids would be with me, and as we would pass this old, deserted eyesore, I would ask, “I wonder what they’ll ever do with that old building?” The most I usually got for a response would be something long the lines of a muttered, “I don’t know…” It was  type of response you give when you're thinking, “Oh no, here it comes again…” Most of the time though, I would get no response at all. I think everybody, myself included, knew I wasn’t really looking for a answer.

The old building has been torn down now. It happened sometime in the last few weeks. I noticed it just after my car went by and it was one of those, “Hey, wait a minute” moments, where you crane your neck to catch a fleeting glimpse after you’ve already passed it by.

I’ve driven by the lot many times since- and I’m surprised to find that I kind of miss seeing that old place. Here’s a picture I posted a while back,of Sam out in front of the now gone building.