OK. This week's sepia saturday
is themed around 'BRIDGES : BUSY SCENES : TRAMS : TRANSPORT : STREETS'
i suppose my obvious choice might have been 'Hebden Bridge' my recently ex-hometown.
But rather, I have picked a photo from my childhood in Halifax.
no trams,no bridges,no people...just a single lonely kodak-hintered street of the 1960's.
Significantly for me ,a row of buildings long demolished.
I bet most Halifax people would be hard-pressed to recognise this perspective now.
It's King Cross Street.(just near where Wynsors Shoes now searches for fresh footfall.......)
These long gone shops included two Chip Shops :a hardware shop:Halifax's only off-licence:2 Paper shops( one of which i delivered newspapers 1964-1966)
Although.In my Minds-I , i remember this road as being steeper...as I carried my big bag of newspapers up it....
I dont know about you .But I still dream of wandering such architecture.
A bit like a phantom limb or the gap where a tooth used to be.......
God Bless & long live these Kodak Sponsored Dreams!
Are you leavin'
Bein' alone
Always made you so sad
I got memories of the city
Followin' me everywhere I go
Are you mad with heartache
Got a country home
And you a Parisienne
Gonna take all your sorrows
Right along with you when I'm gone
And I got to go away
Only need a couple of days
I got one more chance to sing it
And I ain't gon' waste my time
'Cause everything including you
Is on the line
Are you troubled
Feelin' bad
And no one seems to care
STEPHEN STILLS
"......We all live lives afflicted to greater or lesser extent by sin; but it
isn’t our state of being that makes us sinful; it’s what we intend when
we do things, to ourselves, to others, to God."
Fr Alec Mitchell
Manchester
Guardian Letters:Saturday 13 January 2018
*....an intended victim writes. although, knowing it occurs doesnt stop it still happening to others....*.
 |
| Brexiteer spotted on Corn Market today , Halifax. |
Fr Alec Mitchell
Manchester
Guardian Letters:Saturday 13 January 2018
*....an intended victim writes. although, knowing it occurs doesnt stop it still happening to others....*.
10 comments:
Yes, the shadows and echoes still remain, not exactly seen or heard, but there behind the white noise, behind the flash of light out of the corner of my eyes.
As the saying goes "You can't go home again." and it's true. I recently had occasion to go back to a shopping mall I used to frequent in the 50s and 60s and I hardly recognized anything there anymore. So sad as it was such a great friendly place when I was there 'back in the day!'
After reading your post I wondered what my old hometown looked like. The Google street view shows that the business district looks almost exactly like it did in the late 1950s and 1960s--just a different assortment of shops in the same buildings.
Growing up I listened to the old folk talk about places long vanished into the mists of time, never understanding that one day I too would speak in the same way, bringing up memory ghosts of buildings, roads, fences, trees and parks that once defined my personal landscape. It's a powerful emotion of nostalgia for place rather than people, though people are often an integral part of it too. Old photos become the talisman that we use to hold onto those memories.
Today I'm taking my mom a set of family photos that I've scanned and cleaned up for display on her laptop. Little tiny images that are 70+ years old but my mom knows all the stories attached to each one.
Mike: What a lovely gesture for your Mum. It's the stories within & beyond a given photo that give the real interest. I love the word talisman . An anchor with the past......
Postcardy:yes,that happens too..when buildings remain surprisingly the same.The set remains , while the play & cast have changed!
Nightingail: it can happen surprisingly quickly.I went back to Rochdale after an absence of less than 2 years and rebuilding over that short period had rendered good chunks of it totally unrecognisable to me....
Barbara:And there is the secret pleasure (sometimes) of it. Knowing a secret that those around us are unaware of...!Seeing something they dont.....
That before and after comparison is a real shock, and not a good one. The shopping district in the community where I grew up is a similar ghost town. Residents keep trying to revitalize but nothing has taken hold.
Thank goodness for your blog, and so many others, that chronicles these lost moments and ghost buildings. In the course of my family history research, I traveled with my parents to their upstate New York hometowns and saw buildings from their youth that are now gone...and more recently, it has started happening to me as childhood homes and frequent haunts have met up with the wrecking ball. So important to capture these fleeting structures and their stories while they are still with us!
Thank You Molly. And your image of "The Wrecking Ball" ties in very nicely with the post title of Sisyphus ie pushing that ball up a hill...endlessly....
Wendy , I agree with you.But ,dont you think? It's not just the buildings themselves.....but the Social Spaces that go with them that are lost.Fewer & fewer such intimate public places exist.It's the whole social fabric that gets torn.
I didn't participate in the bridges SepiaSaturday this week but looking at your photos makes me want to do one about where I lived, with the street shots of then and now.
Yea Kristin Tis a shame they dont have a Google Maps of The Olden Day
it would make our job much easier!
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