An old house

I was bored earlier and looking on facebook to kill time until the season finale of South Park came on. "Mansion on the Hill" by Bruce Springsteen, off Nebraska started playing on my iTunes. The first verse goes:

There's a place out on the edge of town sir
Risin' above the factories and the fields
Now ever since I was a child I can remember that mansion on the hill

That line conjured memories from my childhood of a house I used to pass all the time on Route 10. It wasn't a mansion on a hill, but like so many words that bring back old memories, it didn't have to make sense. I remembered a hosue from my childhood.

That house is no longer there, but I remember it vividly. There was a small wall around the front yard. At the entrance to the driveway, the wall broke into a door-less gate. At the edge of each wall there were statues of eagles perched on orbs. The house was either a short two-story house or a one-story house with a tall attic. The walls were stone. Behind the house was the thick forest that most of Chester used to be. You can tell the area was heavily wooded because of the forested subdivision nearby. The tall trees surrounding the house used hide envelope it with their limbs.

When I was a kid, I was riding in the car with my mother. I pointed out the house and how I thought it was cool and wanted to live in a house like that. She told me that when my uncle was a kid, he would say the same thing about it.

Today the house is gone. Much of the forest has been cut down. There is now a large neighborhood for retirees in its place. Driving around my hometown, I often long for how small Chester used to be. Unfortunately, unlike Bruce, I can no longer park on a back road and look up at my mansion on a hill.