Changing landscape

I called it 'Pizza Hut road'. Shorthand for a road going past a Pizza Hut, out of town, into Talbot County farmland, over the Choptank near a place Frederick Douglass lived as a slave, into Caroline County farmland, to a major route through farmland into Delaware and beaches on the Atlantic.

I can close my eyes right this very fraction of a second and see myself on that road. I can see the farms. The lives spent making food burst from this patch of Eastern Shore earth. 

I can feel my 20 years here. The hours I spent riding this road. The conversations I had, over there, next to that farmhouse with a governor and a farmer struck by drought; on that bench near that building with a congressman, now "retired," about how special this place is; and there with a friend hoping he could convince me to follow a different path.

Now I pass 3 new developments. Three farms gone. I see lots of new houses. New people. Suddenly being in this place for 20 years counts as a long time, instead of the requisite generations when I first drove past the police in St. Michaels in their blue Volvo station wagons, Barney Fife writ safe.

It's changing, this place.