About a week ago, I was taking my son back to the emergency room and as I was leaving the City of DuPont, I noticed at the intersection of Barksdale and Wilmington there were crews there clearing the land. This corner marked so many memories for me as a child and had already been changed so much – several years ago there wasn’t this large, busy intersection that there is today. The traffic used to be much less, and it used to look a lot different. In fact, one of the greatest joys we had as children was to ride out bikes up to the front of town and pick blackberries on this corner, with the Iafrati’s sometimes there to oversee us. We could walk from their property if we wanted to pick blackberries, right to that infamous corner at the front of town.
We could also walk from the Iafrati’s property through a small underground tunnel (which bypassed the road/traffic) and came out) where the Starbucks and Better Business Bureau are today. This is where the City Hall used to be and where we would go sometimes to drop off miscellanous things for our parents. This was also where we colored Easter Eggs a few times as volunteers. The underground tunnel was destroyed when the intersection was put in several years back. The blackberry picking was the highlight though…it was a contest between all of us kids to see who could get the most and then when we got home with our buckets we’d rinse them all off and then Grandma Anna would show us how to make blackberry jam. She’d walk us through the pectin process and getting the jars ready, even right down to letting us make the labels. She was a real teacher from start to finish and was so patient.
What I remember most about my grandmother was her love for details and saving everything. Whenever I’d arrive to her house the routine was the same, enter through the back door, walk down the long hallway to where you’d find her sitting in her rocking/recliner chair and then we’d talk for a few minutes. She’d most likely be watching the news and talk with you about the record tempatures for the day. Then she’d show you an article she’d recently cut out that fascinated her and most likely it would have been about DuPont or it would be a comic that reminded her of you. These memories I’ll hold with me forever. I haven’t had a Family Circus cartoon by Bil Keane cut out for me since my Grandmother’s passing in June 2001. Now, I also will no longer be able to pick blackberries at the front of town, which is where I’ll always remember picking them. Saving history is more than just writing history, it is also about saving our landmarks. Today its the blackberries, but what might it be tomorrow?