Here's how I tell people how my experience of Nashua has changed: "When I was young, we used to tell people how to get to our house by saying at one point, 'Turn right where the cows are. You'll go over an old stone bridge and then through some narrow curves on a few hills. Then turn right at..."

Then it turned into "Turn right where the cows used to be."

Then it became "Turn right at the ____ subdivision."

When I was young I did a lot of bicycling and running. In early high school (1980s) a friend and I used to ride our bikes as far as we could in the morning, and then try to find our way back without asking for directions. We found all kinds of old back roads and small cemeteries and old stone walls and other remnants of old New England. Now when I go back and go for a run or a drive it's endless subdivisions. I don't resent that at all, I know things grow and change. But it's certainly part of why I don't miss Nashua much except for nostalgia.

That's funny. I was born in 1988, so that world was gone by the time I got here. And even then, when I was a kid there were abandoned buildings to explore like the old tannery, and those are demolished now.

For all the changes they can't get the downtown to "work" and they are really, really bad at trying. I tried too: the mayor appointed me to the downtown improvement committee where I got to watch nothing happen first hand.

I'm sorry to hear that. From a distance, it seemed like there was some interesting revitalization work going on in the downtown area. I remember going to a barbershop off Main Street as a kid with my dad every couple of weeks. Back then it was a classic old downtown, with shoe stores and shirt stores and barbershops and hardware stores and all that.