In an effort to express how the music of John Mellencamp touches our everyday lives, a display of one picture and one lyric, will be posted every day as part of a year-long project. Images and thoughts to ponder. This is picture # 114.
Ghost Towns Along the Highway from Freedom’s Road
Ghost towns along the highway
Guess no one wants to live around here anymore
Ghost towns along the highway
Listen to the wind blow through the
Cracks on the boarded-up doors
But our love keeps on moving
To the nearest faraway place
I guess no one believes in
Ghost towns along the highway
Ghost towns along the main highway
Perhaps it’s the crossroads of another time
Maybe it’s too lonely out here
But I can hear the voices of misery cryin’
Some day these highways will all disappear
But our love keeps on moving
And the wind keeps blowin’ us around
I guess no one believes in
Ghost towns along the highway
Ghost towns along the main highway
Ghost towns along the highway
So many people used to call this place home
Ghost towns along the highway
I guess folks they’re just bound to roam
But our love keeps on moving
To the nearest faraway place
I guess no one believes in
Ghost towns along the highway
Ghost towns along the main highway
Ghost towns are empty, devoid of the real life, because the people who lived, loved, and laughed there left on purpose. Not by chance. Not out of fear, but with grace and dignity, a strength to help them walk on, heads held high, with the past behind them; nothing but the future in their sights, and the living in the moment that is now. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to live there anymore, they couldn’t live there anymore. To save themselves from the destruction, and the slow erosion of their souls, they had no choice but to go. They grew weary of moving their love to that nearest faraway place. It was farther and farther out of reach every time, and they knew eventually, it was a feeling they’d no longer be able to find. The search grew longer, and the cost greater. It is here they came to the crossroads; one road familiar in its pain, the landscape ugly and bleak; the other a journey into the unknown, the possibilities endless and the future bright. The wind howled against the boarded up doors, in loneliness, shaking with a small shiver of terror, because the beauty, the joy, and the reasons for living walked away, and left them behind. Alone. The way they want to be, and deserve to be. To be in their company only serves their selfish need to inflict pain, and keep others down, if only to appear mighty and powerful, looking down from above. Misery cried, but it was only a final goodbye, one last attempt to break free. Misery cried, but it was a mere echo to those who walked ahead and left it all behind. The longer they walked the quieter it became. Until all that remained was the silence.
And an occasional rattle of the boarded up doors.
These ghost towns are not haunted by the sorrow, loss, and shame of those who left, but by those they left behind.
Love and Happiness~ Christine
