A Changing Yuma

This week begins the changing landscape at 16th St and 4th Ave here in Yuma Arizona. The building formerly a doctor's office and another building formerly an auto parts store and a deli are now gone, razed and hauled to the recycling mill of our memory. The round  building that once housed a bank and gold pawn shop are next  along with the an old grocery store and movie theater next on the block sometime later in the year. With the Mortuary being the last vestige of Yuma the way it was. The retail shopping mall Southgate, has already suffered the same fate as the others.

All of these buildings hold memories for those of us old enough to remember and those of us young enough to wonder. Christmas time was the best time of year at the mall. The Christmas tree salesman in the parking lot by Sears. The decorated light posts. The Christmas music while you shopped in the mall. The package wrapping tables for the gift wrapping challenged. All of this with a winter chill in the air. The Palms mall is nice, but it doesn't have the feel that Southgate had. Same can be said for both of the theaters, The Plaza Theater was warm and cozy, not like the new ones, cold and antiseptic. I guess that life, sometime, when we weren't looking, stopped being warm and cozy. Then slowly, to our chagrin,  became cold and antiseptic, when we weren't looking.

The landscape changes, but the people and climate don't. It has been this way for the last 40 years that I have been her.e for the good and the bad. Every so often a little piece of Yuma disappears, and is replaced with a newer more advanced piece. I am not so sure that change is good for all. Different is good, I am still out on change though. I understand that change and progress are inevitable and a part of me embraces that, but a part of me also wishes that the change wasn't all that fast or all that permanent. I like others have memories of Yuma from the last half century, so I guess we will have to make due with those memories.