The Path Not Taken, by Robert Frost

I was looking for a picture of a path, and found this picture. This is not the path I followed. This path is more interesting, it has little brook, and trees, and is in England. My path was dry, no creek bed ran past my path, and weeds rather than lush greenery met me as I traveled down that lane. I wish my childhood had memories of something closer to this picture. in my minds eye, I was always looking for something a bit more exotic than what was in reality.
I've said that Saint Peter would have found it difficult to live on Peter Street. I believe everyone found it difficult. Williamson was a coal mining town. They were so proud of the fact that coal was their main product that the town made their city hall building out of coal. I never thought of it, but I know this would never pass fire inspection today. Those who worked and lived on Peter Street worked in the mines, or the Rail Road. In those days, the rail roads even ran on coal.

It was towards evening, and we could not stay.

I wanted to knock on the door where the Judge lived , but Carol was adament about us moving on. She has since commented that she would never care to return. It's not that I am in love with the place myself, but I am curious as to how things are now on the street.
When we lived there, apartments lined the hill behind us. These were railroad homes. They dug a foundations at the base of the hill, built a house, and then dug another foundation, and built another house ontop until they reached the top of the hill. They did this on both sides of a tsidewalk. A gutter was on one side, so that rain water, and water from washing could go down the hill to a small spillway. We kids used the tile lined gutter for a slide.
On that evening we were there, I noticed that those houses were abandoned, and that some of the windows had been broken out, and the wind whipped curtains from the windows to the outside. It made for an eerie sight..
There is a lot of things I would have liked to explore. I would have loved to go to my old school, and see if the spring was still on the hill near the ball field. I recall as a child, that it ran cold cool water year round. Many a thirsty day, I had drunk from that small spring. Then there was a path, a path I often took, and found a tree had been felled. It blocked the path, and as a child, I had difficulty climbing over it, I am sure by now, it was not as it was then, perhaps it had even shrunk through decay.
As I went up the hill, not going to the right which would have taken me to my old school.,I looked over at a building to my right, which had once been a grocery store. It now was vacant. I saw saw horses in the front window, perhaps someone was fixing it up to be something different now.
I recall when I was a child falling into fresh cement at that very store. I ruined a perfectly good pair of corderoy pants. They never were my favorite, and my Mom never bought me corderoy anything after that.

Peter Street

My father owned two homes in his entire life. The only home I lived in as a child was the house my father, his father, and his brother helped build on Peter Street. We lived in Williamson, West Virginia.
Peter Street was not named after Saint Peter. He would have difficulty keeping his Sainthood living there. I believe the name was more of a description of the narrow ribbon of road which rode between two hills. The street went just so far, and then "petered out." There was a path. I saw many a Boy Scout covered in soot, after fighting forest fires, go down the path towards what I assumed were their homes. I once tried to follow the path, but I went so far into uncharted territory, I returned to what I knew.
Just before you reached the end of the road, if you turned sharply to the right, you would go up a hill and on the top of the hill was the grade school. Grades 1-6. It is no longer there. I was told this when I returned many years later. I wanted to show my wife of some thirty years where I had come from. The house Dad built, now owned by a judge, I was told still stands. It is a grand two story building with a garage, and two apartments over the garage. Dad had enough cement blocks, and wood to go one more story. The rent on the two apartments helped on his meager salary too. But, at five what did I know of expenses, and money?
On my first attempt to find it, I missed it completely. It was getting dark, but I surely should have recognized it, but didn't. I had to ask a man sitting on a porch where "The Justice's " used to live. He is the one who told me that a judge now owned the house.