Harper's Woods

I am proud to say that I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s. I realize that this does make me somewhat old but I am very proud of my era. I am a product of the 60s, I suppose.
Hollywood somehow managed to come up with a television show that reminded me so much of my youth. The Wonder Years was a classic and ran from 1988 to 1993.
The Wonder Years covered the early life of Kevin Arnold played by Fred Savage. In reality, I am nothing like Kevin Arnold but his life reminded me so much of my own. The setting was the late 60s and early 70s covering Kevin in elementary school, middle school and high school.

I often record reruns of The Wonder Years on any given night and start my day each morning by watching the shows. I've seen them all, but nearly every show has a special meaning for me.

The episode I am writing about in this blog was about Harper's Woods.
Harper's Woods was a small wooded area near where Kevin Arnold and his friends grew up. It had special meaning for them because they played there so much as children.

One day they discovered bulldozers were on their way to tear down Harper's Woods to build a shopping area.
That's progress. But, progress often has a price and for these kids it was bulldozing a very special place for them.

They decided to fight the construction project and did all they could to stop the development.
Needless to say they failed and the shopping center was built. Tragically, Harper's Woods was no more.

Small sections of wooded land disappearing in this world is a problem but that is a problem for another blog to solve. A lot of us have had our Harper's Woods. A place we went as children and had a lot of fun in our youth. I certainly had my own.
But, the disappearance of Harper's Woods was not even the point of this episode.

People are born on this planet every second of any given day. People also die at nearly the same rate. People come and people go. With the exception of a George Washington, or a Cesar Chavez, or a Martin Luther King a vast, vast majority come and go and hardly a trace of their existence even remains. We are born, we die, and we are quickly forgotten.
That is we are forgotten if anyone ever knows we are even alive in the first place.

I have driven by the local cemetery and personally witnessed a grave side funeral with all of three people in attendance. I felt saddened by somebody passing and nobody at all even caring.
I am afraid my own life will be the same.

At the end of this Wonder Years episode, Kevin had gotten in trouble at school. His junior high principle sat him down and  told Kevin that he thought of himself as 'special'. The Principle had been at his job for 20 years and showed Kevin pictures on the wall of others that also thought they were 'special' and nobody even remembered who they were after a little time had passed.

Nobody remembers Harper's Woods and nobody remembers us.

That's just the way it is.