the rich section of town

the rich section of town

fiction
edward w pritchard

My History professor at State College said the reason the rich moved to the West of our town's downtown was the old Street car line ran that way and couldn't make it up the hills out there; so naturally the wealthy moved just past where everybody else could travel too. As technology of Street Car design improved the rich areas moved further and further West until automobiles came along and then the wealthy moved way West to the suburbs. At least that's what the rich did until the nineteen fifties when our town began a slow demise and the rich disappeared, except for fund raising and anonymous donations.

Sitting in traffic at the corner of Market, the original east-west road I noticed that the Myers family had an elaborate mausoleum at the old cemetery about four miles from the downtown. Right at the base of that once obstreperous series of hills
inaccessible to the first streetcars and common folk was the finest cemetery in our city. The long forgotten Myers family built a fortress like Mausoleum for the protection and proclamation of their family name in death at that cemetery at the base of that small hill.

Sitting in traffic there, waiting for the traffic light I wonder what became of the Myers family in our town?