...Like It Was Never There

 Took a trip to my old stomping grounds yesterday, and I literally mean, my old "stomping grounds." As a kid, teenager, even adult I walked, ran, biked, skateboarded, drove, tracked, and stomped over the sidewalks, roads, trails, parking lots of Farmington.

We drove downtown. There's not much there, as far as downtowns go...a few buildings, government offices, mostly. Like most small towns, the growth has occurred away from the center of the city, where more people now live. We drove by the old Davis County Courthouse, or Davis Covnty Covrt Hovse, as it is engraved in the granite above the main entrance. It's where Jay Hess gave a speech after being freed as a Vietnam P.O.W. and where I dressed up with hundreds of other elementary school-aged children and welcomed him home. 

It's where I ran around with my friends, playing hide-and-seek, investigating the building like buried treasure was somehow hidden inside. It's where I served for my one and only time on jury duty. It's were I voted as an adult and completed other adult functions, like registering my car and where I attended American Legion meetings.

We learned before we moved the building was to undergo changes. Basically, they were returning the building to its original condition, smaller. Back when it was built, the government didn't need all that space. Now, since the government has grown exponentially and numerous buildings have been built to handle all they do, the old court house wasn't needed.

Change.

It's interesting. We drove by the building and I noticed that the original outside walls, that were inside walls for decades, and are now outside walls once again. Experts and craftsman will restore the building, plug the holes, and generations will grow up never knowing that the building was more than double the new size. They'll just see an old relic of generations past. They'll know the building the way the ones who built it knew it.

It's like the additions never were there.

Change is good, at least, it can be. Might as well accept it because it's the only constant.