Remembering having to leave Mpls. for a year way back in the sixties, returning seemed odd being there was a new three-story apartment building down the street - built on a vacant lot that was "always" there. Wow, big changes. Hardly recognized the old neighborhood.
Now when I return, it's after increments of five, ten, fifteen or 30 years. Rare and seldom. Can't even make-out the Foshey tower underneath and apart from the skyline that's akin to Boston, L.A., or Miami. The roadways, horizons, and even the smells. Where we hunted ducks there's new towns, where we canoed there are homes and kidscapes, and where I took Barbara Peterson to cop that first base, miles from offensive intrusion, there's a global headquarters for some gym-equipment corporation with eight square miles of parking lot around it and a city around that - out of nowhere that's full of 150,000 homes. It wasn't easy putting Barbara at ease then, now I wonder how and where kids do it.
Old printer's row industries, the West Bank, the bridges and Islands of the Mississippi, he two old magnificent train depots, Hamm's beer...the character of the place and backbone of the culture...all gone and same-as-Cincinatti development taken over the memories that aren't easy when landmarks to remember them dissappear and Toys-R-Us replace sacred turf and the moments we bonded with it.
Time and arthritic memories, the iron and rivets that built the past do rust, as when things get too old to paint or repair, they implode them with dynamite and make way for the new and improved youthful versions and trying to retain the feel and auras of the past with pics and stories alone...doesn't retain what was in most all ways.
