Laois Writers’ Corner
We are delighted to launch Laois Writers’ Corner with a wistful and nostalgic look at our surroundings by Noel O’ Rourke. The Laois People welcomes any writers to submit their unpublished prose or poetry for publication here.
Factories, Trains & Houses playgrounds of my youth! By Noel Martin O’Rourke
Factories, Trains and Houses playgrounds of my youth? Not directly as I grew up in the country?
Horses and Cows, Woods and Meadows were the playgrounds of my youth.
Fresh air, green crops, clean rivers and lakes, plenty of fish, plenty of game and above all peace, wild and free as it seemed at the time.
These are all but fond memories for me as I witness how life and the changes to the environment I once knew, changes for the worsted I would imagine?
Necessary perhaps? Economically viable? Keeping up with the Jones, forgetting our own! Faster! Cost it what it will?
Building factories, larger houses, plenty of houses? But yet not enough for those who are left behind! Still no room for the Homeless.
Trains too have undergone drastic changes! From the good old Steam Engine to the modern Euro-train. Once again time is a factor? The time gone by (past) short-term in the now (present) into the future and beyond into the unknown.
The playgrounds of my youth have dwindled from my memory! As I get older and struggle to cope with the ever faster modern day changes.
Truthfully who cares? Gone is the care, gone is all hope for the vulnerable! Gone is the courtesy, no thank you, no please, no Mr. no Mrs.? Hey! Hiya! Guys! No time to look at the neighbors, no time for the old, no time for the Homeless.
My heart goes out to the homeless? Most became homeless not through their own fault, but through our changing society, ’faster, cost it what it will?
The strong will survive the weak will fall, relics of those fallen in the wake of ’Factories, Trains and houses the playgrounds of our youth.