Reflections Over Time J. M. Strother As I walk down Plymouth Avenue I cannot help but to be amazed at the change. Gone is old Plymouth Junior High School, where I spent a good portion of my misbegotten youth. Now a low-rise condominium stands where I once evaded Mr. Jason, our vice principal, and disciplinarian. Gone too are the days when condos were considered an inexpensive alternative for home buyers. Nowadays condos demand a premium and are generally more expensive per square foot than houses, at least in this market. Probably because of the other great change that has occurred over the course of my life – the aging of the Baby Boomers. I know this well, for I am one of them. Granted, I was on the tail end of the Baby Boom, and so am relatively young. Still, it is amazing what changes I have seen take place in this society, much less this town, over the course of the years. And, as in all things, there's good and bad amongst them. We used to have three junior high schools in my community. There was Hixon, for the white middle to upper middle class; Plymouth for the mostly white middle class to lower middle class; and Steeger, for the predominately black middle class to lower middle class. Fortunately segregation was never an official policy in my city. There were small numbers of white students at Steeger, and a small number of black students, even at Hixon. Rather, de facto segregation was enforced by the old artifice of neighborhood schools. Never mind that we all pretty much came from the same neighborhood – you can walk this town end to end in less than an hour. But things have changed. Now we have a Sixth Grade Center, where all the students attend, no matter their race or economic class. Likewise, there is only one middle school. The high school is, and always has been, integrated. By-in-large, while it's not Utopian, there is generally racial harmony. No one gives an interracial couple a second glance anymore. This is not to say that things could not improve. Certainly they can. There are downward pressures on tolerance every day – the growing disparity between rich and poor, anti-immigrant political posturing, and the discrimination du jour (gays seem to be the popular choice now). But despite all these, we are still way ahead of where we started from. Just as the nature of the real estate market changes over time so too does the nature of our society. And just as homeowners have to work to keep those changes positive, so too do each and every one of us have to work to build a more tolerant society. For change can be a good thing.