And on the last Saturday night of the year......

....I reflect back upon the trip back in time my brother and I had today, as we took part of the afternoon and drove up to Beaverdam, our hometown. I've done this at least a dozen times or so over the years, but today's trip was THE MOST SURPRISING one I've ever experienced.

You always expect to see new homes being built, since the town is only 40 to 45 minutes from Richmond in a very popular suburban county. Hanover is a "two-part" county. The western portion has always been very rural, and Beaverdam is at the most northwestern point of the county, so the farthest away from Richmond. The other side of Hanover (which is basically cut down the middle by Interstate 95) is much closer to the eastern side of Richmond, so it was developed much earlier. So, by 1985 when I left Beaverdam for college, my home was still in its quaint rural setting, while Mechanicsville in Eastern Hanover had almost become overdeveloped commercially on Route 360 around a high school, and houses were popping up here and there.

Well, Hanover leadership apparently went from liberal to conservative when the questions of developing Western Hanover came up. By this time, Glen Allen had been transformed from a quaint historical village into a large conglomerate of an area that need three different zip codes.

LARGE commercial development, then the advent of many subdivisions, cause "Richmond" to creep closer and closer to Western Hanover. This growth all took place in neighboring Henrico County, so Hanover avoided the development issue, but had become more accessible for people working in Richmond who didn't want to live the city life.

So, in the past 20 years, houses started to pop up, first along Route 33 between Glen Allen and Montpelier (the "enemy" town of Beaverdam in the Southwest quadrant of the county), then around Montpelier, then on Route 715, the main road between Montpelier and Beaverdam.

So, today, a trip to Richmond from my old home in Beaverdam is like 35 minutes, rather than 45 minutes plus, since Ukrops has a store much further west on Staples Mill Road, etc. :) It also means more jobs are closer to Beaverdam, too.

All that being said, it seems major home development finally broke through up at home. There's an old dirt road just above my old homestead (which was a parsonage then, by the way), and I'd read some development was on it, so we took the dirt road to its end, turned around and came back out. Back at the road, you resume straight on 715 and a tenth of a mile to your right is my one and only childhood home.

Just as we're preparing to slow down to view as much of the house and its surroundings as we can while driving, I let out the biggest "WHOA!!!" I've ever shouted. To the left, was a road. A new road. A road where the woods my brother played in for years used to stand. Seeing a new house somewhere is one thing. Seeing A NEW ROAD almost in front of my old house is another. I stopped at it, then got back on 715 so we could see the house. A young couple bought it a few years back and the outside looked basically unchanged (they've added a nice shed where Dad used to park the school bus) but I've been told the inside has lots of TLC. :)

I drove down to the next dirt road, went by Union Baptist Church, and around the old dirt road where on more than one occasion I drove a little too fast, trying to make sure I got my girlfriend home by her midnight curfew! I knew a new subdivision had been started at the other end of the dirt road, near her old house; I had driven in what parts had been established a few times over the years.

Then, thanks to the thinking of Uncle Frank, he put two and two together. At the end of the main road of the subdivision has been another road. Turn right, and it ends after just a few lots. Turn left, and there were new lots up for sale over the years, but that road wasn't very long, coming to a point where, unless you owned a dump truck, you had no business trying it.

Well, the dump trucks obviously made it through to the other side, because this was the road that, now completed, came out almost in front of the parsonage. Nearing that road's end today I told my brother, "we've never seen our house from this view before!!!"

So once where the woods reigned supreme and young boys acted like Daniel Boone, not needing a game controller and a Playstation to stimulate imagination, now stands many very nice homes (big enough that we can't afford one of them!) with more lots available.

So the growth continues. Exponentially. If I return once a year from now on, I fully expect to see accelerated growth and will be surprised if i do NOT see it. The exact opposite of the mindset I've had for 21 years.

Oh, and in the old cowpasture next to our back yard where we played football, baseball, et al.....about where the barbed wire fence always was.....we saw some heavy equipment parked there. So, soon, where cows once mooed and where I once walked a half-mile behind the house to a pond at the back of the cowpasture, should be replaced with rooms.

As Peyton Manning says in the latest MasterCard commercial to the guys who let the piano (I think) get away from the moving truck and it heads downhill to its inevitable demise, "They're not saying 'boo', they're saying 'mooooooversss..'".

The times, oh they are a'changin.