Goodbye to Beaver Dam Road landmark

Goodbye, Beaver Dam bus. We miss you already.  

Not the drivers who whizzed by without a glance; not those who thought you defiled the landscape; but us, your former, city-dwelling neighbors for whom you had become a comfy signal that we were almost home. 

We’re the ones who wish you had survived a little while longer. 

Though you were beat up and bruised, we came to appreciate you.  You gave us a sense of the local life we interrupted, a reminder of our own school days, a reference point for our visitors, “Turn at the old school bus.”   

You were the topic of many a back porch conversation. “I saw the white-bearded man mowing the grass; is he the owner?”  “Once there was a metal shop on that corner.”  “Oh, that’s why all those old cars are there.”  “Yes, that’s the Beaver Dam Car Farm.” 

A neighbor who lived close by voiced her gratitude, “Can’t tell you how many accidents would have been fatalities but for that bus.”  Seems you were a guardrail.

When serious road work began at the corner of Kendale and Beaver Dam roads, our local conversations shifted.  “Please, not another development.”  “That property is zoned for business; heard a Royal Farms was coming.”  

I’m from the Bronx, so if retail is an option, I’m rooting for a bodega-of-sorts, a general store, a Peddlers’ Village.  A business that will maintain that landmark corner’s spirit of what was.  

Parking sufficient for a quick stop for milk, a six-pack, or some scratch offs. 

A small deli counter with a breakfast grill, a freezer for pints of Hopkins Farm Ice Cream, and employees who will slice baloney for a little boy waiting as grampa sips a cup of coffee that didn’t cost him $3.  

A place where regulars are recognized with a smile and asked, “The usual?” 

A place that might be called The Beaver Dam Bus Stop.