They tore down my childhood home to put up a McDonalds

We lived there from when I was a toddler till I was on the cusp of adolescence. It was a two-storey pile of yellow bricks my folks bought around ‘58, the first house they were able to buy after getting off the boat at Pier 21. They rented the upstairs to Mom’s brother and his family. It was across the traintracks from the railroad station. Sometimes in summer the railroad men would hop the fence, throw a blanket on our lawn, and spend their lunch hour playing cards. It came with two acres, which included a small barn and a couple of chicken coops. My parents were able to recreate the peasant lifestyle they’d known in Prussia before they were evacuated to refugee camps in Denmark in the dying months of the war. We had a couple of cows for milk and cream, pigs, and eggs from the chickens until they were layed out, at which time they found their way into the roasting pan. Mom would whack their heads off with an axe, causing me to learn early on where the expression “running around like chickens with their heads cut off” comes from. The rest of the process was a family activity. I didn’t know what the pigs were for until Dad and a couple of uncles slaughtered one right there in the barnyard. It was a large beast, and not at all copacetic with their plans. The sight of these guys chasing a pig around the yard with sledge-hammers and axes wasn’t something children needed to see, but at least we knew where our food came from. The place was a bit of a fixer-upper. The first project was indoor plumbing and a septic bed, but not until we’d spent the first winter with a hand-pump and an outhouse. Mom and my grandmother used to keep amazing gardens. From kohlrabi to carrots to beets to peas to potatoes, they had it all going on. There was even a pear tree, and to this day I recall what a thrill it was to open a jar of pears in the dead of winter. When I heard the sad news that we were moving, I made a map of that garden, hoping to recreate it somewhere else sometime in the future. It’s never happened, and by now I’ve lost that map… Another dream bites the dust! To bulldoze that house, with its rich history, and pave over those gardens, to put up a fast food restaurant, is utter sacrilege. If you happen by the Elora McDonalds and see an elderly gentleman parked in the back corner, eating pickled beets out of a jar, with tears streaming down his face… I figure that’s about where my room used to be. Feel free to say hello.