The Case of the Missing Neighborhood

OK, so I wanted to start this entry off with hard dates but I obviously am not using the right search language to find out when the Lamar Alexander Parkway (State Route 321) was built through downtown Maryville. So for now, let's just say sometime in the 80's. I think that's close enough. I know Mom and Daddy had already moved to the farm and I was no longer living in TN when it happened. Otherwise, I believe it would have been seared into my memory because its construction cut an ugly swath through my old neighborhood.

In order to "align" and widen 321, construction gouged out huge chunks of the surrounding areas, creating a diagonal pathway that resulted in the demolition of businesses and homes: West End Drugs, where I was almost killed by a runaway car when I was 4 or 5 and where I stole Odd Rod cards when I was in 4th grade. All the homes of my friends that lived on Highland. The apartment building my uncle owned. The apartment building next to our house. The apartment building across the street that had the cool garages where we played. The little homes along Pistol Creek. The big ol' home in the woods where the neighborhood "witch" (in other words, elderly, cranky, slightly senile lady), Mrs. Lyles, lived.

Then the Taj Mahal was built and even more of the neighborhood was demolished: the fruit market, the barber shop, more homes, yet another road. Where we once had a perfectly normal-sized and functional Municipal Building we now have a perfectly ridiculously large and ostentatious building with a grand lobby of unused space. It is a classic example of people getting too big for their britches.

And over the years the high school expanded and in so doing, demolished more homes and roads, mostly in order to build parking lots (no one drove to school when I attended). There's something particularly insulting about lovely old homes being torn down for a parking lot.

Today, I can still walk around the old neighborhood and often do when I'm there. Much of it still exists. But every step is punctuated by the absence of some important piece of my history, and it is disconcerting: this is here, but that is gone. In many ways, I've never really gotten over it. I want my neighborhood back!