The Last Survivor

Last fall I moved back to the house I had lived in when I was married. I had been living in an apartment in town for about a year, which was something I wasn't used to. Apartment living, in the city, is a lot noisier than having a house in the "burbs." My profile states that I live in Erie, Pennsylvania, but I actually live in a small town outside of Erie. Saying that I live in Erie gives people that aren't familiar with this part of the country a better idea of where I live, without confusing them by saying I live in " such-n-such", small town, usa, that they never heard of before.

When I moved back in the fall I knew it would be a lot quieter here, which was one of my main reasons for accepting the house back when my ex offered it to me. I'm not the kind of person who likes living in apartments in the city. Though my apartment was a very nice one, and my landlord was an old school friend, which made it even better. I can't say as I miss the neighbor couple fighting all the time, my other neighbor taking showers at midnight (their bathroom was up against my bedroom wall), and I especially don't miss being surrounded by concrete.

I like having grass, and trees around me. I like having my back porch to sit on in the morning and watching the wildlife, but something has changed around here, from the last time I lived here, about two years ago.

If it's possible, this quiet little town I live in has even become quieter, to the point where I sometimes think I'm the only one living here. It is something I didn't really notice last fall. In this part of America it was growing cold when I moved back, and most people, at that point, were living inside their homes, and getting them "buttoned up" for winter. I probably should have noticed that there seemed to be a lot fewer people around, when at Halloween I only had 23 children show up at my door, many less than I remember from years past.

It didn't really "dawn on me" how quiet my little village had become until this spring.

It appears that many of the teenage kids that lived in my neighborhood have grown up and moved on, leaving a very noticeable silence.

There doesn't seem to be near as many cars going up and down my road as I remember. Sometimes a half-hour or more can go by without a single car passing my house.

The shop that is behind my house closed up its doors this spring, moving all their equipment out, and leaving behind an empty parking lot that used to be so full, with workers coming and going on a couple of different shifts. Though I don't miss the alarm that used to go off on the weekends when nobody was there, and would sound for hours until someone would come in to shut it off.

There is a large field next to the shop that contains five soccer fields, though the goal posts are still there, the children are gone. They used to have games there every night, and on the weekends from sunrise to sunset, now the field is empty and grown over.

My neighbors that used to be "out and about" all the time, now seem to either be living inside their homes or not home at all. I used to chat with them all the time, now I hardly ever see them. A neighbor on one side of me, that I used to see out all the time, I now only see him come out when he weed-whacks his yard, and I haven't even had the opportunity to talk to him in the eight months since I moved back. A neighbor on the other side of me has apparently been very ill, and I don't get to talk to him near as often as I used to. He says "They are going to start wintering in Florida from now on since he took ill and can't take the cold anymore."

I was looking forward to more quiet, but this noticeable silence is something I wasn't ready for. Has my little village becoming a ghost town? Sometimes it stays so quiet here, for such long periods of time that I could almost imagine that I live in a post-holocaust period when some plague has killed everyone off, and I'm the last survivor.