I’ve Seen My Lifetime Disintegrate Before My Eyes

I’ve seen my lifetime disintegrate before my eyes.

Do you have a recurring dream that you just can’t understand? No, I’m not talking about the one where you realize the final exam is today and you haven’t cracked open the textbook. Nor am I talking about the one where the giant ape is slowly chasing you, but try as you might, you just can’t run.

Those are typical anxiety dreams. They have nothing to do with final exams or giant apes. They’re more likely related to something in your daily life (usually work or some other stress-inducing environment).

Here’s the kind of dream I’m talking about: it involves a familiar landscape, maybe current, maybe from your past. It’s “familiar” in the sense that it evokes the real thing except it’s altered in some unrealistic way.

Allow me to demonstrate this by using myself as an example. Mind you, your dream probably means something entirely different to you.

For the first ten years of my life, I grew up in a relatively small geographic footprint. It stretched about three miles from the City of Lackawanna to the Town of Hamburg. In the middle sat a square mile called the Village of Blasdell. For seven of those ten years, my address read “187 Abbott Parkway, Blasdell, New York” (the other three years, it read “83 Victory Avenue, Lackawanna, New York”).

Truth be told, I didn’t really live in the Village of Blasdell. Just as today where my address says “Honeoye Falls” even though I don’t live in the Village of Honeoye Falls but in the Town of Mendon, so too back then I didn’t actually live within Blasdell, but just outside it in the Town of Hamburg.

Here’s the odd thing about that. If you ask me today where I live, I’d say, “I’m from Mendon.” But if you ask me where I grew up, I’d say, “I’m from Blasdell.”

The weird thing is, except for the bowling alley, the grocery store, and the drive-in, I really didn’t do too much in the actual Village of Blasdell. I didn’t go to Our Mother of Good Counsel Church in the Village (we went to St. Anthony’s in Lackawanna). I didn’t go to Blasdell Elementary school (I went to Big Tree in Hamburg and Woodlawn Elementary and Woodlawn Intermediate in—you guessed it—Woodlawn).

Ah, but Blasdell was the hub through which we traveled to and from all those locations. Specifically, from its intersection with South Park, we’d turn towards the west on Lake Avenue. There, we’d pass through Blasdell Junction, the energizing heart of the Village.

Now, the average person might wonder why I would call Blasdell Junction the “energizing heart of the Village” when most of the people and businesses (including Blasdell Elementary School and Our Mother of Good Counsel Church) were located within walking distance of the intersection of South Park and Lake Ave. Of course, when the Village has a footprint of a square mile, everything is within walking distance.

However, in terms of pure power—the kind of power that drives a nation—you cannot deny the significance of the energy that ran through Blasdell Junction. There, in less than a tenth of a mile, ran the main lines of no fewer than five Class 1 Railroads—The New York Central, The Erie Railroad, The Nickel Plate Road, The Pennsylvania Railroad, and the Lehigh Valley Railroad. (OK, for you high iron aficionados, technically the Pennsy and Lehigh Valley interchanged on the Nickel Plate’s mainline at the Junction.)

Add to this frenzy of activity the short-line South Buffalo Railroad and you’ve got a majestic tribute to industrial America. The Junction represented a line of demarcation. To the east lay the residential section of Blasdell. To the west was the industrial portion (mostly the Bethlehem Steel Plant). Sandwiched in between sat the placid green of Blasdell Fireman’s Memorial Park.

How meaningful was this plot of land in my life? Every Sunday, we’d pass through it to go to St. Anthony’s Church. Once a week the school bus would take us over that multitude of street-level train tracks (seven in all) from either of the Woodlawn schools to catechism at Our Mother of Good Counsel Church. (Why we went to church school at that parish instead of St. Anthony’s had to do with proximity.) Before my grandparents would move to their apartment above my grandfather’s pizzeria on South Park Ave. across the street from Abbott Parkway, we’d travel through the junction and under its railroad bridges (three in all) to visit my mother’s parents in Lackawanna.

Blasdell Junction stood out as a pivotal landscape during the formative years of my life. As we paused on Lake Avenue, imagine how the size, intensity and magnitude of the trains impressed the eyes of a young boy. That was me.

The trains dazzled me. I thought they’d last forever. I thought Blasdell Junction would last forever.

Sadly, time has not been kind to all those railroads (which have now been whittled down to two), nor has it been kind to the surrounding industry. Most of the street-level tracks are there, but only one bridge remains. The Park, however, has been improved. We even celebrated my birthday there when my kids were younger.

OK, do you get how important Blasdell Junction is to me? Now let’s get to those dreams.

They aren’t nightmares. They’re more like a quick scene in a movie. You know the kind I’m talking about. There’s no plot within the scene. It’s merely there to connect one plot point (in the previous scene) to another plot point (in the next scene).

Here’s the gist of the dreams: changes at Blasdell Junction.

They’re not the actual changes. They are, however, plausible changes, only they’re not practical. Tracks are realigned or torn up and removed. Lake Avenue is either widened or has been replaced with grass. I’m usually walking through the Junction. I’m just an observer. I’m rarely interacting in any way (except, every once in a while, moving away from an oncoming train).

In the most recent dream, everything was removed, and the topography refashioned. I took one of the new paths (note: it wasn’t a road). It led to the top of a hill (a newly created hill). I could see the entire Junction. Or at least the land that was once the Junction. You couldn’t tell there was a junction there at all. Relandscaping had hidden any remnant of old rights-of-way, whether they be track or road.

It was just like any long line of such dreams that left me wondering. What do they all mean?

Then it finally occurred to me.

It’s not about Blasdell Junction. It’s about Carthage. And it’s not about Carthage in a literal sense. It’s about us. Think of the scene in the movie Patton when George Patton visits Carthage upon his landing in North Africa. Think of the emptiness there. Now juxtapose that with his voiceover at the end of the movie when he describes the Roman triumph. The movie ends with this line “All glory is fleeting.”

Indeed, all lives are fleeting. Sure, family and close friends will remember them, maybe even glorify them. But with each passing generation, the memory dims. That particular life eventually fades into and is absorbed into a past of anonymity. No one will remember the paths of that lifetime. It’s gone. There’s not even a remnant of right-of-way.

No matter how brightly the lives shine for the moment, it is only a moment. Like a brilliant meteor streaking across the sky, they last for but an instant in time.

And like those meteors, they are only remembered by those that witnessed them. For everyone else, they’re only a story passed on. Over the generations, that story fades until, ultimately, it evaporates, disappearing forever.

Yes, Blasdell Junction will retain its footprint in the historical record. But as the railroad business evolves, it will move from an entire chapter to a small paragraph. As the transportation system evolves, it will move from a paragraph to a sentence. As the goods delivery infrastructure evolves, it will move from a sentence to a footnote.

If history is kind, it will remain a footnote. More likely, it will dissolve into nothingness, waiting for the day when some industrial archeologist rediscovers it.

If it’s that lucky.

Would be that any of us will be that lucky.