The Summer of Elm Street

So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.

Yarr. It's odd, actually, that I should take the news of my friend's decision to move to a new house with great sadness. After all, I never lived at the Manley House, which has been Elm Street's central Clemson address since mid-2000. When the guys moved out of the old Elm Street duplex a year after I graduated, I was a bit heartbroken. Of course you can't expect other people to stay in a cramped place because of your memories (or even theirs), but it was a bit sad to see the old place lost to Elm Street.

Still, sadder was the one trip I made to Clemson after graduation where I stayed at Elm Street as a guest, rather than a resident. All in all, sad as it was to see the nucleus of Elm Street move away from Elm Street, it was a better thing in the end. Since then visits to the Manley House have been a regular occurrence, and on some small level there's a part of you that never wants your friends to grow up and leave the college town, because as long as they stay you have a tenuous connection to the place. You can live vicariously through them, and even though indeed they've grown up and moved on, the fact that they are still there, in the town, in the place that holds so many of your fondest memories, that is comforting.

So Lucky Bob's decision to move out of the Manley House and to a new location 12 miles down the road is tough to take. Once Scanime moved out of the Manley House, it was only a matter of time; Lucky Bob could have taken roommates, I guess, but it would not have been the same. How many roommates would be okay with strangers coming in to sleep on the couch every now and then, sometimes in large numbers? That hardly seems likely. I think the truth is I just wanted Lucky Bob to stay in that house forever, because then I could stay there forever, too.

Still, as sad as it to see one more thread of my connection to Clemson cut, I am reminded of Robert Frost's poem. The Manley House, like good old 43 Elm Street, was surely gold in its time. Yet nothing gold can stay; and in Frost's metaphor gold gives way to green. It is sad, certainly, but in reality green is at least as good as gold ever was, and more lasting. The Manley House may have been late spring for Elm Street, but summer is upon us all. Let's go out and enjoy it.