It's an ugly piece of road, no doubt, with no sidewalk to speak of. Little residential left, those few stalwarts living with front windows covered with old sheets or cardboard to block out the now somewhat faster-moving life in front of them. Many old houses turned into service businesses - nothing that would require foot traffic, some transformed more successfully and with more care than others. They sit in clusters of two or three - perhaps old family compounds, with some surrounded by larger tracts of land that used to be, I suppose, bucolic yards, filled with sunshine and perhaps laughter and lemonade on a hot afternoon.
Typically, when I am driving it, it's during a version of rush hour, on what is now deemed a failed road for modern standards and demographic counts, lines of cars in opposite directions (only one lane each way) either semi-crawling along or whizzing past depending on the rhythm of the stoplights or drivers needing to turn left across traffic. But at this time, it was amazingly quiet - just a few vehicles passing infrequently, giving me a glimpse of what the life on that road may have been like when all those houses were filled with families. In some of the yards you can still see faint outlines of where gardens used to be, old outbuildings now dilapidated, and hints of the original driveways, that weren't much more than shell covered sand, or well worn grass.
There's not even a footpath to speak of, and certainly no sidewalk. That's how few pedestrians hit this section of road, but happily to my feet, no refuse nor animal droppings to worry about either. I realized quickly that I didn't have to keep my eyes on the ground for too long, and was able to absorb the scenery - which is how I prefer to stroll anyway. The tallest of the grass on some of, what I would suppose would be easements, not much higher than my ankles, and sparse enough that I didn't have to worry.
I came across one property, probably all told about a third of an acre, in particular. This one still residential. It was a small, square, and very symmetrical house, with a front door and two straddling side windows. Old style windows, wooden frames with single pane glass, single-hung sash - the kind I'm sure that still has thin rope in the frame. A small front porch with three steps to the walk with a small portico to keep the rain out while you find your keys. The whole house probably is two rooms wide, maybe all of 20 steps (my stride is a solid yard) from side to side. Each side had two windows as well, very functional, very quaint. The house was so well-kept, perfectly painted and appointed, not a ridge of dirt in a shutter or gutterline. It's lawn well-groomed, even to its very edges where it met the road. The house sat relatively close to the road, but not square to it, slightly off-kilter, which is probably what caught my eye in the first place. But what kept my attention were the front windows.
They were opaquely painted. I imagined what it was like to make that decision, to paint one's windows shut. It's one thing to put up curtains, or a prop up room dividers, or even throw that cardboard against the pane. These are all temporary solutions. To paint them provides a permanence. A bold statement of closing out a world changed, or maybe, closing in a world that hasn't.
When that house was built this road was barely even a road to speak of. It was a quiet country path, no pavement, no county signage or streetlights. Laundry likely hung in the yard soaking up the ol' Florida sunshine. You might not even see anyone for days as this was the rural escape from big city. Back then this area was called New Hope, and the loudest sound was from the poultry colony chickens from less than a mile away, and if you didn't work there, you worked in the various orange groves that covered the landscape. Air-conditioning was keeping your windows open, so people spoke softly and from time to time some music probably drifted along the breeze from inside.
To give you a little context for the growth of the area, in 1922 the region had 100 documented residents. By 1960 that had increased, at a reasonably moderate rate to just over 1,500. These paths had little need for change for a long time. In the next 20 years, the area would see the the population explode to over 100,000. Change came hard and fast here, in less than a cosmic blink. No longer is the area called New Hope, the chickens and most of the oranges are gone, retail, service stations, and restaurants having supplanted them long ago and the air is filled with sounds of planes, trains, and automobiles.
But sometimes, in that sweet moment of late morning, if the air is somewhat still, you may hear a whisper of backwhen, the silence broken only by an errant chirp or a scuffle of brush. It's usually brief, and I was lucky enough to have been at the right place at the right time to catch it.
I wonder if through those darkened, tightly sealed windows the light of day will ever be seen again. I keep walking, and finally arrive at a new stretch of sidewalk, accompanied by all the trappings of new growth - curb cuts and fences, fire hydrants, and asphalt driveways. The ground underneath my feet is no longer green or yellow or brown, just man-made gray. It's no longer soft and slightly uneven, but strenuously hard. I look back once more and realize I will likely never walk that path again, and also that I'm glad I did.
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