Progress?

The street north of where I live is busy. If you get going West at just the right time in the evening, you can sit through the light there two or three times before barely squeaking through so you can sit at the next light two blocks down two or three times. It’s a four lane road, but could easily do with a few more lanes. And the powers that be have decided it shall get those lanes.

But that means they’ve needed to make room for those lanes. So everything on the north side of the road has had to go. It has been interesting to go to work in the morning and have there be a Jiffy Lube on the corner, and when I come home there is just a Jiffy Lube sized whole in the ground. Demolition goes fast.

But there are houses there too. And that’s been hard for me to watch. When I went to work this morning there were two houses on the corner. When I went for my walk just now I noticed the houses are gone and instead there are three or four pieces of large machinery, a pile of rubble, and a large dumpster. People used to live in those houses. Parents raised their children in those houses. And now they are gone, demolished in the name of progress.

Something about that doesn’t quite feel like progress to me. There are times in life when things have to be destroyed so that other things can be built. But I don’t like the idea of destroying a home just to build a road.