I remember my dad telling about a time when he was ten years old when his father walked him through a town in upstate NY which had been a vacation destination for wealthy people from NYC. The houses were huge, and one after the other was abandoned and falling into disrepair. Nobody anywhere at a time when most would have been filled. He said it was eerily quiet, no dogs, no people, no cars. I didn't know what to think...
A few years later as the housing bust got into full swing, I remembered his story and did the math, and realized that he was in that town in 1934. I thought about how when I hiked up a road above Park City, Utah the year before, across the valley from the ski road you could see hundreds of mega-mansions, 10000 square feet, and UP, so large that it made the opposite slope appear to be quite close when in fact it was a couple or three miles away at the nearest.
History repeats, but never exactly, because human nature is so predictable. |
