Oh Glorious Day

Once again I have been awestruck by the drive of my own people in their constant pursuit of perfect convenience. It's an amazing thing when you step back and look at it. The fact that "super pharmacies" even exist at all is a cosmic mystery to me. I've yet to figure out who uses them, why they are even there, much less why a pharmacy would be advertising milk for sale on their jumbotron marque. Not content with simply existing they spring up in commercial herds; a Walgreens catty cornered from a CVS, both of which are next door to a Walmart. The sort of idiocy that disproves any possibility of natural selection being the cause of our existence. But the mere presence of these sorts of commercial endeavors isn't what has baffled me this week. No, it's what was deemed expendable in the pursuit of one more Walgreens.

Hope Mills is an armpit of a town. Well, that's not completely fair. Fayetteville is an armpit, and Hope Mills, by comparison is rather nice, but that's really not saying much. The downtown while rather "Mayberryesque" is tucked away where no one sees it and the buildings are all full of pawn shops and ethnic barbershops. There was at one point a Hope Mills Lake, but 4 years ago a flood took out the damn (and the road that went over it) and stranded half the town on the far side of what is now, Hope Mills ditch. The view when driving through town is pretty much Walmart, Dollar Tree, several super pharmacies and an obscene number of "chicken n' biscuit" restaurants. The only redeeming part of the town is a two block long section of older housing. It's nothing grand mind you, just a few nice older homes, a couple Greek revival homes, a few arts and crafts bungalows and one small log cabin.

The cabin probably wasn't more than 100 years old. This area used to be covered with massive long leaf pine trees. These were the trees that were prized by the British navy as single piece masts. All European woods had to be spliced to make a mast but long leaf pine was so big, and the heartwood so strong that they could easily make the mast of any ship. Well, the big long leafs are long gone and this small log home was obviously constructed after they were all gone. The logs were all small and you could see the tapper in each log in the house. As with all log homes, it wasn't a big house and there was a poorly built extension out the back. Worse still, someone had seen fit to paint it, red of all colors and the chinking was painted white. Even still, that little cabin did wonders for the soul as you were stuck at the light at the corner where it sat.

Well, as you may have already guessed, not everyone shared these feelings about the cabin. Apparently the large lot that it was sitting on had more "value" than the cabin. Today I was naively shocked to see a bulldozer running through the middle of that little cabin, scraping the ground clear of that waste of prime real estate, while another worker pounded in a "your local neighborhood Walgreens coming soon" sign. I should of known. A CVS had just been built 6 months ago across the street from the cabin, of course we needed a Walgreens as well and that cabin was standing in the way of convenience.

So what little soul Hope Mills has is reduced even further. Traffic on the two lane road through the stand of older homes will keep backing up until the inevitable road widening project sees them all fall to the dozer. In their places will come closer, more convenient "chicken n' biscuits" and pharmacy milk and we'll all be the better for it... won't we?