My Town

I grew up in Wauseon, Ohio, one of those all-American small towns; when people would ask where Wauseon was, we would say "about thirty-five miles west of Toledo," or it's Exit 3 on the Ohio Turnpike (now it has a different exit number). My dad grew up there, too. It was truly one of those towns where you couldn't go to the bank, grocery store, or anywhere, really, without seeing someone you knew. My sister and my paternal grandparents and other significant people from my childhood are buried in the cemetery that lies about a mile west of the downtown area. It was a great place to grow up, and even though 1980 was probably the last year I really lived there, in some ways it will always be home.

So it was sad for us to learn that in the early morning hours last Saturday, a fire began in a downtown restaurant that eventually took out most of a block in the small business district. Two dozen fire departments and about three hundred firefighters were called in to battle the blaze. At the end of the day Saturday, seven businesses were lost, and buildings that had been standing since the late nineteenth century were no more. What I knew as Waldeck's--the 5 and dime store on the corner of Main Street and Elm--was a pile of bricks and rubble.

So many wonderful memories from my past are attached to those buildings. Waldeck's was one of my favorite places; it had creaky wooden floors, toys, books, and--best of all--a glass case candy counter just inside the door where my grandma would take me for chocolate stars and jelly nougats (and the chocolate stars were for her as much as for us). Shaw's was a men's clothing store where I bought many gifts for my dad, Jon (even after I had grown up and moved away I shopped there), and probably my brother, too. The Coach Light Room was a women's clothes store where my mom and I would go and take advantage of sales; the ladies there would actually let us take clothes home "on approval" to try them on and decide if we wanted to make the purchase or not. And Hammontrees--that amazing mini-department store that had a bit of everything: print music, records, Precious Moments collectibles, housewares, and major appliances. I registered for wedding gifts there, and I still have dishes that were given to me as wedding gifts that I know were purchased there. And as recently as last fall, I spent one of those warm, memorable, "girlfriend" evenings at Doc Holliday's with my best-friend-from-high school, Julie; I hadn't been back to Wauseon in a long time, and I met Julie there with our families to spend some time together in our old stomping ground. I'm glad I did; it was the last time I would see the town I grew up in the way it looked when I was growing up.

I did shed tears--for my town, for my grandma, for Jon and my sister, for our old house, for loss in general.

And yet as news broke Monday of the massacre at Virginia Tech, I was reminded that buildings are just buildings that can be replaced by other buildings. Human life is a gift, and for those who are left behind when it is lost, there really is no replacement--only (hopefully, with time and healing) the patching of huge, gaping holes in an exercise of damage control. And the loss of a few old buildings in a small town in Ohio still was sad, but it didn't really seem as terrible anymore.