Buckeye, 50 years later

Buckeye Union High School 2011

Nothing stays the same.  Especially when you go back 50 years later.  Little ol Buckeye, once just a small town with a main street lined with local businesses like a bakery, Clay's Department Store, Wolf's Department Store, Vansykes Hardware, Compton's Foods, a lumber company, drug store complete with lunch counter and other places that have long since vanished.  There was only one place left that looked the same.....Saba's Department Store.  Even the store front looked the same, as if I was back in the 1950's in some time machine.  It made me sad to see Saba's but also happy that it is still there, still hanging on even with all the encroaching strip malls that have started to blight Buckeye's beautiful farmland.  You see, what is happening to Buckeye is happening all over our country.  It is the sameness, the lack of the entrepreneurial     spirit, the freaking monotony that America is becoming.  Every town and city are the same now. You see the signs, the huge mega malls screaming at us with their blazing oneness....OFFICE  MAX/TARGET/WALMART/OLIVE GARDEN/SUBWAY  and blah blah blah.  Every place you go, it's the same thing.  These giant corporations are edging the small guy out, making it nearly impossible to own a small business, let alone, make a go of it.  Right out there on the edge of Buckeye is a Walmart warehouse.  I am quite certain it is so huge it can be seen from the moon.  It's sitting out there where I use to drive as a kid, taking my parents car out through those cotton fields that were cooling off in the evening air.  The smell of those fields was just incredible, and the beauty of it all is but a memory.  That's where the ginormous warehouse sits.  Does anybody else see this or is it just all ok?  Are well all just being cloned into the same person?  Living the same lives?  We go into the Olive Garden and eat ginormous meals that are served to us on a platter that 50 years ago would have fed the entire family, now it's just for one person.  Then we head over to Walmart to shop for things we really don't need....more stuff.  Take it back to our subdivision home, throw it on the counter, flop down in a Lazy Boy chair and turn the TV on to watch the same old garbage.  It's all the same.  No wonder people are depressed, fat, unmotivated and discouraged.  We've forgotten who we are, because we are all turning into the same person.  We are all walking the same path.  I think it's time we break away from this incredible sameness that is sweeping our country.  That is why I love Saba's Department Store.  Still there, still working, still part of the Buckeye that once was.  It just makes me feel good.  Saba's isn't part of the sameness.  It doesn't really matter what you think about Saba's, whether you like it or not.  What does matter is that they didn't fold and I admire that.  All in all, I still have my memories of Buckeye, when it was really Buckeye.  And nobody is going to morph me into anything else, thank you very much!   Now go out there and do something different today!  Make a difference.