By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
May 5, 1963
I MADE a sentimental journey to my native west last week, met some old friends, made some new ones, and returned home more sad than rejuvenated. Montana wasn't the same. Only the Rockies were the same. Great Falls was a galloping metropolis of more than 60,000, twice the size it had been when I'd left it in 1944.
Even Choteau had caught the fever. Growth and change had robbed me of my home town and I was a stranger in it. It had cast off its pioneer, placid runtiness and grown up. Its brawling, cowtown past had disappeared. It was busy. It had traffic. You could no longer park with your eyes shut.
THE OLD-TIMERS had passed on. My contemporaries--and few of them remained--now were the greybeards. The Royal Theater now was the Montana Power Co. building. The old stone grade school had come down, even as the old brick high school had years earlier.
The shortcut I once took to this latter seat of learning was gone, too. The once unencumbered expanse now contained the town hospital. Our spacious old barn lot was gone. So was the barn. So, in fact, was the house. It had been moved around the corner and, stripped of front porch, now faced south on "Division St." Who would have guessed, back in the stagecoach days, that any street but Main would ever be worthy of a name?
THE VACANT lots where we played ball no longer existed. There was no clear view of the woods off to the west along the Teton. New houses stood in the way.
It was the same to the southeast. Years ago the road through this area led to the cemetery. It also now led to new homes and a new church. And further east, on the "bench" were the golf course and the airport.
My wife and I headed north, after chatting a while with some old friends, and interest quickened. Less than a mile ahead would be the white house my folks had moved into when I was still in high school, the showplace of Choteau's "suburbia."
It stood on high ground in majestic isolation and was our special pride. Meadow and field stretched generously away in all directions. It stands in isolation no longer. It has the company of ramblers--new and attractive interlopers.
THE APPROACH along the highway to the south was less attractive. It was scarred by a chaotic agony of rubble--shanties, signboards, old trucks and the evidence of an embryo auto graveyard.
I wanted to stop, take the path through the meadow to the house as I'd done so often long ago, push open the kitchen door and hang my hat in the little closet off the kitchen.
But, pressed for time, we hurried on toward my brother's place in the mountains. Anyway, the house I knew was but a slice of memory. There was no little closet off the kitchen now. The whole interior had been changed.
The new ramblers, the country club, the hospital--they all shouted of change--from old languor to new hustle, change from days of abundant time to days of pressing urgency. I dislike having this place of memory slip away, but one must yield to the inevitable. I don't like to, though, and wish it weren't necessary.
Copyright 2021 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.
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