One of my favorite places to run in recent weeks has been the Arkansas Aeroplex. I'll usually start on Memorial Drive, then venture either into the Westminster Village residential area, or into the more industrial-looking section of buildings that once served the Eaker Air Force Base.
It's a fascinating area, especially on foot. While some buildings are now occupied, many, of course, are not. Sometime, I would like someone to take me on a detailed tour of the facility, and explain to me the purpose of each building. Or maybe someday, when the community gets all its other financial issues figured out, local historians can erect signs so future generations can understand all the old components that made up the air base. Until then, it will remain a mystery.
All the same, on my Aeroplex runs, I am often struck by the desire to travel back in time. Having arrived in Blytheville in late 1999, I have no memory of the air base being open. To me, it's always been closed. Sometimes I wish for just one day, I could go back in time to visit the base in its heyday. How cool it would be to see the buildings active with the work of Air Force personnel; to see the neighborhoods bustling with military families from all over the country; to see B-52s roaring overhead throughout the day and night.
Of course, if time travel were possible in the Blytheville area, Eaker Air Force Base isn't the only place I'd like to visit.
I'd love to spend a day on Main Street back in the old days -- on a Saturday afternoon -- when all the town folk would come out, and the area farmers would come in, for a day of shopping and visiting.
I'd love to visit the old Ritz movie house -- to see the old building in its prime, back when it still had its balcony, and the lobby had its ornate furnishings.
I'd use the opportunity to venture over to Ash Street, which they say was a "black Main Street" back in the day. It would be fascinating to revisit that era of segregation, when the African-American community had its own business district.
I'd visit some of the city's old buildings, like the Kress Building and the Ingram Building, while they were in their vibrancy. I'd visit landmarks that have long since disappeared, like the Hotel Nobel, Camp Moultrie and the Savoy Theater.
I'd use the time machine to travel back to the day Interstate 55 opened. I'd stand atop the interstate overpass and look east, seeing nothing but cotton fields all the way to the Mississippi River. I would travel to the riverfront industrial area, to see the land now occupied by the steel industry as nothing but pristine farmland.
It's always fun to think about nostalgia like this. Who wouldn't want to travel back in time to see our community the way it used to be? The funny thing is that -- believe or not -- in the future, people will long to travel back to present-day Blytheville, to see what life was like in the earliest 21st century.
I can almost hear it ... decades from now, folks will long to spend just one day out at the Blytheville Youth Sportsplex, when it was at its zenith, back when the fields were immaculate and teams traveled from all across the state -- and even from different parts of the country -- to play here.
People will long to go back to the days when the Thunder Bayou golf course was open, to see the golf course that was once considered to be one of the top public courses in the state.
People will wax nostalgic about the days when the steel industry dominated the local economy, and mammoth plants lined the Mississippi River, and provided jobs for thousands.
Others will dream of seeing downtown Blytheville back before the railroad overpass was built, when Highway 18 had that kooky alignment where the westbound traffic used Walnut, and the eastbound traffic used Ash.
(For the record, I'm not insinuating that any of these community changes are imminent, with the exception of the overpass project, which is obviously well under way. But as history has shown us, all things come to an end eventually. Whether it's in 10 years, 50 years or 100 years, is anyone's guess.)
The lesson in all of this, I suppose, is that we should be grateful for what we've got. It can be fun -- and educational -- to think about things from the past; but we should be wary of the seductive notion that days gone by are superior.
At the end of the day, it's hard to say that any one era or epoch is better than any other, especially when so many of the things taken for granted in the present, inevitably become the things that are longed for in the future.
aweld@blythevillecourier.com