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Kodama, Part III
Feb. 8th, 2015 05:56 pm[Continued from Kodama, Part I and Kodama, Part II.]
There was more to the story than I originally thought. As we sat underneath the shade of Old Hickory, Lyle Greengard quietly leaned up against its trunk and explained the circumstances under which his family had entrusted the property to the town.
Back before either of us were born, the Greengard estate had been approximately three times the size of its present holdings. In addition to the area now known as the town park, they had owned several parcels of undeveloped land in the most inconvenient of locations - smack dab in the middle of a housing block or sandwiched between the steel mill and the railroad tracks. For as long as anyone could remember, these miscellaneous bits and pieces had stayed within the family; the Greengards had always quietly resisted any and all efforts to purchase, develop, or otherwise alter their properties. When pressed, they claimed that the land was of priceless historical value. George Washington's left foot had once trod upon the soil or something else equally specious and impossible to verify. The fact of the matter was that they simply didn't want to relinquish the land.
( About fifteen odd years ago... )
There was more to the story than I originally thought. As we sat underneath the shade of Old Hickory, Lyle Greengard quietly leaned up against its trunk and explained the circumstances under which his family had entrusted the property to the town.
Back before either of us were born, the Greengard estate had been approximately three times the size of its present holdings. In addition to the area now known as the town park, they had owned several parcels of undeveloped land in the most inconvenient of locations - smack dab in the middle of a housing block or sandwiched between the steel mill and the railroad tracks. For as long as anyone could remember, these miscellaneous bits and pieces had stayed within the family; the Greengards had always quietly resisted any and all efforts to purchase, develop, or otherwise alter their properties. When pressed, they claimed that the land was of priceless historical value. George Washington's left foot had once trod upon the soil or something else equally specious and impossible to verify. The fact of the matter was that they simply didn't want to relinquish the land.
( About fifteen odd years ago... )
