Ever go back to a place where you used to live---and it's gone?

[panader0]

I have 4 times. It's a very strange sensation. I just looked on Google Maps for an
old house I used to live in on the Deschutes River. I zoomed in--and it's gone.
The bar across the river is still there. Twice now in Oregon, once in Bisbee, Az., and once
in Tucson.
There are probably more, if I checked. When I was younger I moved around, and lived
in old, cheap houses.

[we can do it]

1. Yep. The house I grew up in with my parents is gone.

Neighborhood is now a big mess. Meth labs and heroin.

[unblock]

2. I went back to ohio

But my city was gone.

[Ohiogal]

4. Hey, oh, way to go, Ohio!

[panader0]

5. Big Chrissie Hynde fan here.

She was born on my first birthday.

[Ohiogal]

3. No

But all three of the schools I attended -- elementary, middle, and high school -- have all been torn down and replaced.

[Yonnie3]

6. Yes

Even the small hill it was on was gone. It now seems to be a parking lot. There is no frame of reference other than a single remaining residence I recall. Hard to be sure where it was.

It was 14 wooded acres with farmland adjacent and not many people around when I left in 1968. Now it is businesses, town houses, highways and parking lots. Very unsettling to me. The house was still there in 2000 when my brother and I looked for it. It was now down to 4 or 5 acres of woods. In 2008 it was gone, not just the house, but the little creek, the trees and the hill.

I found it very unsettling.

[PoliticAverse]

26. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot. n/t

[MustLoveBeagles]

7. Yes

The house I lived in as a teenager is gone. The land was purchased by the high school which is right next to it. They demolished the house to expand the baseball field. The house I lived in as a child in a different town is still standing. When I lived there the house was considered an eyesore. The rest of the neighborhood has now deteriorated to the point that it's no longer the worst house in the neighborhood. It was depressing to drive through it.

[backtoblue]

8. Lived in a trailer park as a child

It's now part of the Walmart parking lot.

[Wellstone ruled]

9. Yes I have,

only once the land and buildings as well as the grove of trees were bulldozed into a pit and burned and buried. No birds or wild life,sureal.

[Squinch]

10. Went to the place where the family business used to be. The garage and building are gone

and there's a hotel there!

[hermetic]

11. Not physically, but...

I grew up on military bases and have seen on the news where 2 of them no longer exist. Kind of an odd feeling about that.

[Kaleva]

14. 3 Naval bases I was stationed or homeported at are gone.

Orlando, Philadelphia and Charleston. The 3 ships I served on are all decommissioned. One of which has been scraped, the second is now in the Turkish Navy and the third is scheduled to be transferred to Taiwan.

It's been 35 years since I was on my first ship but I can still picture in my head where most of the spaces were and how to get to them.

[hermetic]

15. Mine were also Naval

One in Alaska, one in California. I have very strong memories, especially in Alaska. So wild and beautiful and oh the fun we kids used to have there.

[FuzzyRabbit]

12. Yes, the house where I grew up is gone.

My Dad built most of the house himself. It was a small one bedroom when my folks bought it in 1946. He added three bedrooms, bath, kitchen, utility room, garage, covered patio and landscaped the large lot and had a nice vegetable garden. He kept it up really well. It was a comfortable place to grow up, surrounded by trees, birds, and great neighbors.

My folks moved about 30 years ago after dad retired.

One day a few years ago I decided to drive by the old place. All that was left was a pile of rubble and bare dirt. Even all the landscaping had been bulldozed. It was heartbreaking. Still is heartbreaking.

[sarge43]

13. I checked Google Maps

I didn't recognize my old stomping grounds. Even the school is gone.

[yallerdawg]

16. Yes.

It's like our past is being swallowed up by Stephen King's "Langoliers."

The house we brought our newborns home to. Gone.

The house our kids went to school from Head Start, Pre-K all the way to High School. Gone.

My Navy ship. Gone.

And the businesses I worked for in 40 plus years. Except for some national chains. Gone.

We're just two houses away from disappearing as if we were never here.

[sinkingfeeling]

17. Just my elementary and high schools. Both gone.

[Tikki]

18. Yes...

Drive the grand kids by there often on the way to the beach.

The townhouses there now are so expensive , not like the cut up barracks they dragged there
from the Navy base back in the 50’s or 60’s and rented out as tiny apartments.

Our first place we lived in when we came to California in 1970; torn down and converted in the
80’s.

The Tikkis

[Ahpook]

19. It is weird

Did the same thing as you. Zoomed in and quite a few buildings are replaced

[friendly_iconoclast]

20. Yep- the entire street is gone, and is now a huge parking garage

[csziggy]

21. Yes - the house I grew up in is gone

My parents still owned it but could no longer lease it since the 1925 era wiring was not up to standards. After it sat empty for a couple of decades, the city condemned it and my father had it torn down. It's amazing how small that lot looks without that house on it!

Most of the places I lived while in college were victims of development. The mobile home park I lived in for the last couple of years of college is completely gone, along with all the houses. There was a Circuit City store there, then a health food store but now the location holds an empty building.

Even the double wide my husband and I lived in for almost thirty years is gone - but it was moved to a new location. When we built a real house, we gave the house to a family whose old house had burned. They had four generations living in an RV so getting a house with twice the square footage of their original house was a windfall.

It cost more to move the house than the value of it and we saved the cost of having it hauled to the dump and the dump fees by giving it away. Every so often we drive by to see it. The new owners have kept it up and landscaped around it so I think they are happy with it.

[kmla]

22. Yep. The house where we lived when I was born is now gone.

All of the others I’ve lived in are still standing, but not in great shape.

[lastlib]

23. Last year, the house I spent my early childhood in was torn down....

Kinda crushed me to see it go, but c'est la vie..........

A few years ago, we took my mom back to the last farmhouse her parents lived in--it's still there, but the place doesn't look at all the same. The barns and all the outbuildings are gone, the yard is completely changed around, old trees are gone, house is greatly remodeled (which you'd expect after fifty years, I'd say). Time marches on......

[mnhtnbb]

24. The house where I grew up in northern NJ was mansionized.

Went by it when I went back for a 40th high school reunion (even though I moved across the country before graduation ). Very strange feeling.

Here it is in 1955 when I was 4 years old




and in 2009 (you do the math!)

[mythology]

25. I know at least one house I lived in is gone

To be fair, it was a piece of junk built by my biological dad for as cheap as possible. Tearing it down was a mercy killing.

[jberryhill]

27. My home planet was destroyed in the second galactic war

[left-of-center2012]

28. I lived in a farmhouse here through junior high