A club that's no more a club

Cellar hole in Dana, Mass.

From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com

'Ruminate on an article in The Stamford Advocate  about how nature is fast reclaiming the Twin Lakes Swim & Tennis Club, in Stamford, foreclosed and abandoned in 2008, with its “14 acres delivered back to the whims of nature.’’

The newspaper’s Francis  Carr Jr. reported:

“In the parking lot, dragonflies flit among clumps of wildflowers growing through cracks in the asphalt. Farther on, where the swimming pool used to be, broken piles of rebar-laced concrete and stacks of wooden debris rise from thickets of thigh-high grass. Here and there, an overturned deck chair or a rusty old grill evoke the site’s leisurely past. Someone has spray-painted ‘RIP Twin Lakes’ across the roof of a vine-covered outbuilding.’’

The description reminded me of the crumbling dairy-farm buildings in the town I grew up in the ‘50s --  buildings that had been abandoned only about 20 years before as these small farms became uneconomic. The roofs were sagging and vines were extending themselves through broken windows.

That in turn reminded me of the late and eerie Robert Frost poem called “Directive,’’ parts of which I’ve quoted before.  It starts:

“Back out of all this now too much for us,

Back in a time made simple by the loss

Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off

Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,

There is a house that is no more a house

Upon a farm that is no more a farm

And in a town that is no more a town.’’

To read  the whole poem, please hit this link.

Our structures will erode, decay and disappear sooner than we might think.

To read Mr. Carr’s piece, please hit this link: