Revitalized

My then-future-mother-inlaw commented that everything here looked new.

I hadn't really thought about it those terms. Cheap. Suburban. Overbuilt. Dry. Cultureless. Boring.

But not new.

Of course, she was right. I have hundreds, if not thousands of photos of things in New England that are rusting/cracking/drying/rotting and generally in some advanced state of decay. Here, things don't usually last long enough to do that. If something looks old, the HOA throws a fit, or someone buys it, bulldozes it, and puts in condos or a McMansion and creates an HOA.

In Dover, a house was worth plenty just where it stood, no longer how long it had stood their. In fact, tearing it down risked the wrath of the National Historic Register Nazis or some such group. The only lingering question was how much to charge for rent. It wasn't old, it was quaint.

I keep finding myself a little homesick for Dover. I miss my friends, I miss the coffee shops and places that you can walk to (and want to walk to). I miss having interesting things to look at. The irony is that I spent so long dreading New England and missing Socorro, though after a while, I made some friends and figured out how to have fun. It's how things go, I suppose.