Read an article about an old chapel in my hometown. It was the chapel my mother attended as a child. Located first in an area called Freetown it was later moved to another location. Today it is being used as a gym, a place to exercise. There has been much talk of moving this chapel back to its’ original location. That is being talked about in the interest of preserving history. A local man of national renown was eulogized in that chapel. I wasn’t aware of that growing up, Mom never mentioned that. That, and Freetown as its’ name implies, has a history as well. Let’s just say Freetown was established as a sort of “reservation”, a place for displaced people to go when their land was sold. At the time it was mostly native Americans, black folks and poor white people. Freetown was a sort of slum back in the early days. It has since risen to quite the prominent area in town. An area whose history is, shall we say, been edited a bit. 

 Anyway, after leaving a comment about that on the article, an old friend responded. I have known this man since childhood. I won’t say we were close friends, best buddies or anything close to that. I will say we knew each other. He lived in a different part of town and we didn’t socialize for that reason. It was just too far to ride a bicycle to go “play” with him. Still we share a common memory of a place in time. A place that is being lost to history. All places change, evolve over time, and those that witness it are often surprised by that. It sneaks up on us. I haven’t lived in that place for over fifty years now. I think that maybe my memory of what it was is a bit better than those that stayed! That’s simply because in my mind, nothing has changed. I’m always surprised by the littlest change. I hear they have a 7-11 now. More houses, more roads, and more people than ever. 

 I grew up in a section of town called soak hide. It was as the name says, a place that hides were soaked. The native American people used that area because it was a shallow area of brackish water. I was told that at one time a man unearthed many artifacts along the banks of soak hide. I never looked for, nor found a single thing. I just rode my bicycle up the center of that stream, the sand was hard packed there, for no reason other than you could. Soak Hide dreen. Dreen is an old English word meaning drain. You could follow that drain for quite a distance and I never did follow it all the way to its’ beginning. The end went into Three Mile Harbor. Lots of memories down there.

 Well that article did spark a few more memories and the reminder from an old friend helped with that. I appreciate the chat and wish Facebook was used more in that fashion. Just an exchange of memories. Maybe that chapel will return home. I hope it does. My grandmother had ten children, all of them went to that chapel, some more than others I suspect. But I’m certain my grandmother prayed there when her three sons were off to war in 1941. They all returned home to her, and that little chapel.