The Lancaster Pike

Down this once famous graveled road I drive by day and drive by night my mind replaying stories of times past. As if thinking about them can make them real again. Buildings standing with new faces, signs. I see them now only as they once were in my childlike memory, mind. Each corner sparks a lost thought. Transparent faces of townies crossing cross streets a blur of long gone friends and schemes living only in my most selfish dreams. The Devon Horse Show grounds where the Main Line's best show off at its annual celebrated competition. Villanova University where I honed my hoopster skills a high-schooler sneaking into the gym on snowy days. The Bouquet Flower Shop where I summer jobbed. The Bryn Mawr Deli where I waitered posing for giggling girls of crosstown Harcum College. "Good Counsel" church, my reverent gothic fortress for those important beliefs that later would fall away. The Bryn Mawr Trust Bank that juts out proudly on the main corner, a gray stoned prominence where accounting of my money's worth was kept. It too a dream. A dream of a future now lived. Sepia shadows of decades ago. A feeling of loss wells up within me of time I want back again. To right lost wrongs. To try again somehow. Sometimes I turn away so not to remember. But I have no way of getting there. Street after street, ghost after ghost looking down alleys and ways in my haunting trance. So many visions with no redeeming consequences. Simple reminiscences of my time, my simple life and this once famous graveled road.