Having just completed the blog I posted on the topic of “My Memorial to Me”, I was taken with the urge to drive the 90 miles or so to the old neighborhood and to recharge my batteries with the feel and aura of the old homestead, or at least the neighborhood. What I found there was life-changing. At least, many of my family and friends probably hope so.
In an effort to prolong the enjoyment of my visit, I elected not to drive directly to the house, as I have often done in the past, but rather to stop first at the shopping center down the road a bit. This was a miraculous place as I was growing up. The little short brick wall around it housed the first cocoons I had ever seen – those of the plentiful Monarch butterflies that inhabited the area. I got my first library card in the library at that shopping center, for ten cents, and there’s an excellent chance that the dime I used to pay for it was 100% silver. The library card itself was printed on pale orange paper with a metal number plate fixed to it. No plastic wallet cards in those days. Toward the end of the school year, we could buy (for $4.00) a strip of ten tickets to movies at the Fox Theatre that was located in this shopping center. They played kids films all summer long, changing every Wednesday. The manager was a real nice, completely bald guy with horn-rimmed glasses and always in a tuxedo, and the theatre had ushers and sold Ghirardelli Flicks candy. The Union Bank in the parking lot had a very tall cylindrical sign, and from right near there they shot off fireworks on the Fourth of July. The very first Kentucky Fried Chicken and Baskin-Robbins stores I ever saw shared a small outbuilding next to a Chevron station where my brother had one of his first jobs. I remember spending a lot of time watching the mechanized robot cobbler in the window of the shoe repair store. I remember buying little things at the Holiday Hardware store that we would need for a third grade project. I remember the smell of both the library and the dry cleaners. I remember Swede’s Barber Shop, and Smitty who used to cut my hair there after I rode on the crossbar of my brother’s bike to get there. Smitty used to promise me that he “would not use the sharp scissors” after one time when he pulled my hair a little to hard and hurt me a bit. That was another place my brother had worked. I remember the bakery and that my sister used to always get sugar cookies, even though the rest of us would vary what we got. I remember any time I wanted something I would go through the planters looking for discarded glass soda bottles, which I could redeem at the Food Giant store for 2 or 3 cents each, and maybe get enough for a large grape-ade for 17 cents (including tax) or possibly a plate of fries at the bowling alley for 26 cents (including tax). I got real excited last year when I got to show my family a glimpse of that bowling alley on a TV commercial. I remember one summer morning when my mom let me ride my bike by myself to the Kress store and have breakfast at their lunch counter for something like 40 cents. That’s the same Kress store where I bought literally hundreds of Matchbox cars for 55 cents each. Right across from Martin’s Card and Party shop, the Kandy Kane dress shop, the Boston Store (which I found excruciatingly boring to go through with my mom except for the illuminated Swank Belts display in the men’s section near the east doors. And I remember my parents finally yielding to my pleas to try the Parasol restaurant, and their decision that the quality wasn’t good and the prices too high.
Most of it is gone now. My little brick wall is now an apartment complex. The library moved into a bigger building immediately adjacent to where it used to be, and the old library building is now one of several community centers in the neighborhood. The Fox Theatre is now a bank. The box office is an exterior teller window. The Union Bank and its sign have both yielded to the largest real estate office I have ever seen. The Chevron station and KFC are actually still there, but the dry cleaner has moved into what used to be Baskin-Robbins. Holiday Hardware is now a golf shop. What was the Food Giant is now the warehouse behind an enormous Albertson’s store. The Boston Store is now a Stat’s, the Parasol is being converted into a Mel’s Diner, and everything else is just plain gone.
From what I read, the newer shopping center across the street put a lot of pressure on the old one. Most of the changes I have just described have occurred since my last visit there about 2 years ago, and I’m not even sure the new shopping center was there yet at that time. So more change has occurred in that place in the past two years than in the preceding 40 years.
This set a really bad tone for the rest of my day. Seeing all of these places razed and being replaced with modern buildings that, to be honest, don’t seem all that different from what was there. It feels like destruction for the sake of destruction.
Went by the house and took the picture that accompanied “My Memorial to Me”. Again, more changes in two years than in the previous forty. New windows. Fewer plants in the yard. One walkway completely removed and another rebuilt. New garage door. Saw it open at one point – revealing that the inside of the garage has been wall-boarded and a door put in to the master suite. Dad’s built-in workbench is gone. Just dragged me down further.
Went by the old elementary schools – all of them. I was in a kindergarten class in one school for half a year, and the whole class (including the teacher) was moved to another school to finish the year. Then a third school for first grade. The first and last schools have changed the least. They really look as if they have progressed through evolution rather than the revolution that troubles me with all of these other sites. The second school is no longer a school, though, but rather another community center (how many does a town of 10,000 need?).
The biggest changes at my last elementary school were different colors of paint, a fence around it, renumbering all the classrooms, and moving some playground equipment around while replacing some others with the plastic kind that don’t get so hot in the sun. They did add a kindergarten, but they did so without destroying anything but open grass.
Since KFC survived all of this, I thought about having lunch there. But to be honest, all of what I saw just demoralized me to the point where I wasn’t hungry.
I think I have experienced what my family and friends would consider a cure for the neurosis that I detailed ad-nauseam in “My Memorial to Me”. Personally, I don’t think that lost hope is a cure for anything.
In an effort to prolong the enjoyment of my visit, I elected not to drive directly to the house, as I have often done in the past, but rather to stop first at the shopping center down the road a bit. This was a miraculous place as I was growing up. The little short brick wall around it housed the first cocoons I had ever seen – those of the plentiful Monarch butterflies that inhabited the area. I got my first library card in the library at that shopping center, for ten cents, and there’s an excellent chance that the dime I used to pay for it was 100% silver. The library card itself was printed on pale orange paper with a metal number plate fixed to it. No plastic wallet cards in those days. Toward the end of the school year, we could buy (for $4.00) a strip of ten tickets to movies at the Fox Theatre that was located in this shopping center. They played kids films all summer long, changing every Wednesday. The manager was a real nice, completely bald guy with horn-rimmed glasses and always in a tuxedo, and the theatre had ushers and sold Ghirardelli Flicks candy. The Union Bank in the parking lot had a very tall cylindrical sign, and from right near there they shot off fireworks on the Fourth of July. The very first Kentucky Fried Chicken and Baskin-Robbins stores I ever saw shared a small outbuilding next to a Chevron station where my brother had one of his first jobs. I remember spending a lot of time watching the mechanized robot cobbler in the window of the shoe repair store. I remember buying little things at the Holiday Hardware store that we would need for a third grade project. I remember the smell of both the library and the dry cleaners. I remember Swede’s Barber Shop, and Smitty who used to cut my hair there after I rode on the crossbar of my brother’s bike to get there. Smitty used to promise me that he “would not use the sharp scissors” after one time when he pulled my hair a little to hard and hurt me a bit. That was another place my brother had worked. I remember the bakery and that my sister used to always get sugar cookies, even though the rest of us would vary what we got. I remember any time I wanted something I would go through the planters looking for discarded glass soda bottles, which I could redeem at the Food Giant store for 2 or 3 cents each, and maybe get enough for a large grape-ade for 17 cents (including tax) or possibly a plate of fries at the bowling alley for 26 cents (including tax). I got real excited last year when I got to show my family a glimpse of that bowling alley on a TV commercial. I remember one summer morning when my mom let me ride my bike by myself to the Kress store and have breakfast at their lunch counter for something like 40 cents. That’s the same Kress store where I bought literally hundreds of Matchbox cars for 55 cents each. Right across from Martin’s Card and Party shop, the Kandy Kane dress shop, the Boston Store (which I found excruciatingly boring to go through with my mom except for the illuminated Swank Belts display in the men’s section near the east doors. And I remember my parents finally yielding to my pleas to try the Parasol restaurant, and their decision that the quality wasn’t good and the prices too high.
Most of it is gone now. My little brick wall is now an apartment complex. The library moved into a bigger building immediately adjacent to where it used to be, and the old library building is now one of several community centers in the neighborhood. The Fox Theatre is now a bank. The box office is an exterior teller window. The Union Bank and its sign have both yielded to the largest real estate office I have ever seen. The Chevron station and KFC are actually still there, but the dry cleaner has moved into what used to be Baskin-Robbins. Holiday Hardware is now a golf shop. What was the Food Giant is now the warehouse behind an enormous Albertson’s store. The Boston Store is now a Stat’s, the Parasol is being converted into a Mel’s Diner, and everything else is just plain gone.
From what I read, the newer shopping center across the street put a lot of pressure on the old one. Most of the changes I have just described have occurred since my last visit there about 2 years ago, and I’m not even sure the new shopping center was there yet at that time. So more change has occurred in that place in the past two years than in the preceding 40 years.
This set a really bad tone for the rest of my day. Seeing all of these places razed and being replaced with modern buildings that, to be honest, don’t seem all that different from what was there. It feels like destruction for the sake of destruction.
Went by the house and took the picture that accompanied “My Memorial to Me”. Again, more changes in two years than in the previous forty. New windows. Fewer plants in the yard. One walkway completely removed and another rebuilt. New garage door. Saw it open at one point – revealing that the inside of the garage has been wall-boarded and a door put in to the master suite. Dad’s built-in workbench is gone. Just dragged me down further.
Went by the old elementary schools – all of them. I was in a kindergarten class in one school for half a year, and the whole class (including the teacher) was moved to another school to finish the year. Then a third school for first grade. The first and last schools have changed the least. They really look as if they have progressed through evolution rather than the revolution that troubles me with all of these other sites. The second school is no longer a school, though, but rather another community center (how many does a town of 10,000 need?).
The biggest changes at my last elementary school were different colors of paint, a fence around it, renumbering all the classrooms, and moving some playground equipment around while replacing some others with the plastic kind that don’t get so hot in the sun. They did add a kindergarten, but they did so without destroying anything but open grass.
Since KFC survived all of this, I thought about having lunch there. But to be honest, all of what I saw just demoralized me to the point where I wasn’t hungry.
I think I have experienced what my family and friends would consider a cure for the neurosis that I detailed ad-nauseam in “My Memorial to Me”. Personally, I don’t think that lost hope is a cure for anything.
1 comment:
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