The old buildings downtown were memorials of the businesses they used to house, pictures of their former lives in the windows. No stores, no people on the sidewalk or looking out windows. We would turn to head out of town, pass little houses that hadn’t been painted in decades but had, as my husband pointed out, brand new motorcycles on every porch. All the houses had porches, torn screens in storm doors, and rusty bicycles in the yard. Then we’d have to turn, and we’d be back on that main street.

The twilight zone is a real phenomenon after all.