The town closest to where I grew up was Battle Ground, Washington. I still remember the sign in the early 1960s:
ENTERING
BATTLE GROUND
POP. 996
There has been a (modest) boom in the decades since. Battle Ground is now a sprawling shapeless town/city, with the old town's dowdy buildings sitting uncomfortably off to the eastern side of town. The newer developments – housing tracts, mini-malls, supermarkets – have grown like fungi to the north and west and south.
In the 1960s, Battle Ground was mostly just Main Street. The town's two banks (First Federal and First Independent) were directly across the street from one another. The Catholic church, the Church of the Nazarene, the Methodist church, and the funeral home where my father's funeral took place were clustered close together. Al & Ernie's Foodliner (also a feed and grain store) anchored the eastern end of Main Street; the Agco Thriftway was right in the middle of town; Bea & Don's Market and the '76 station were at the western end.
The liquor store was one street over.
The school was at the western edge of town. When Partner and I visited Battle Ground in 2008, my old grade school was still standing. (How small it seems now! It seemed so big in those days!) It's terribly dilapidated; the roof is covered with moss. It's probably been torn down by now. We played on the swings for a while, and then we walked to the high-school stadium and sat for a while. The view was exactly the same as it had been in 1973: football field, fence, houses just beyond, and (in good weather) Mount St. Helens off in the distance. (See that white smudge over the horizon in the photo above, about two-thirds of the way across? That's it.)
My dear old town: goodbye, goodbye.
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