What's in the air.....

My hometown of South Shore, Ky is in the news....well, that’s if you consider the Portsmouth Times as news....
Back in my way back when time, Portsmouth, Ohio was a thriving community of 40K plus....the N & W Railroad had a big yard, there was a steel mill, two or three shoe factories and, for a shot in the arm, the Atomic Plant came to the area and a host of newcomers came to build it....downtown Portsmouth was busy in those days with seven or eight movie houses, a couple area drive-in movies, a booming if somewhat raucous nightlife and shopping, shopping, shopping.....one of the most lucrative businesses was the toll bridge (the U.S. Grant) across the Ohio River...
Well, that was then... Portsmouth t’day is less that 20K and most of the ‘real’ stores have gone...there is no Railroad, no steel mill, no shoe factories, in fact, no factories at all....they do have a college, Shawnee State, but they tore down some aw’fly nice old homes to put it where it stands....A college is a nice thing for a small town to have but when it is the primary business of a town......ahhhh well....
Anyways, South Shore made the front page of the Portsmouth Times for a drug bust...I didn’t know any of the people involved.....’course, I don’t know a lot of people back there t’day.....As Portsmouth went downhill, sadly South Shore did also.....way back when, South Shore had two movie houses, a Chevrolet dealership, S.M. Roberson’s general store (a precursor of t’days supermarkets) a bank, several restaurants, a couple barbershops, service stations and assorted businesses..
Times change (sighhhhh)....’n whether they’re better or worse isn’t really for us to judge....we’re much to close to our present to make a fair assessment and as far as our past is concerned.....well, we tend to filter our mem’ries...
which ain’t necessarily a bad thing.....just the way things are.....