After over-indulging on apple strudel and sausage biscuits and gravy (not at the same meal), it seemed like a good time to get some much needed exercise so I settled for a walk since I'm down in Southern Indiana visiting mom and a hundred miles from the gym.
Usually when I'm down here I walk to the North and East away from the town and towards and through the cemetery .
I enjoy the serenity of the old graveyard full of my ancestors. I also like to look for relatives of the town's founder with the family name of Gootee chiseled in stone.
This time though I decided to walk South and West towards the town proper.
Loogootee has changed over the years and Loogootee has stayed the same over the years.
Walking down the old main street today my mind flashed back to walking down main street yesterday.
Yesterday was about half a century ago.
Yesterday if you happen to have a few spare coins in your pocket you could go into Walker's Drugstore and order a root beer float at the soda fountain.
Better yet you could walk around the corner and catch a matinee and buy a small bag of popcorn at the Ritz Theater.
The Ritz was old even 50 years ago with ripped fabric covering most seats and a ceiling that looked like it could fall in anytime and finally did not long ago.
Many of the buildings of the old town square still stand and some are repurposed with other businesses but most stand empty, casualties of our current era of changing times and needs and power shifts.
Walker's Drugstore now has a sign that reads Bowling Massage on the window.
At first reading I wonder to myself how they incorporate the two activities and I run numerous juvenile "happy ending" jokes through my head.
Then I read on and see that the proprietors last name happens to be Bowling and I run out of material so I move on.
The old Five And Dime store has long ago been upgraded to The Dollar Store in another part of town.
As I said, the old Ritz Theater gave up the ghosts of all the Horror shows one day and just collapsed on its own. The footprint of the building now half covered with a parking lot and the other half a body shop.
Looking at that corner standing here in 2013 I'm trying to superimpose the Ritz in its former location and glory as I try to do with the rest of the 2013 town square which is more of a triangle.
I get a faint image in my minds eye for the comparison though what I need is a book that has pages that overlay the current condition of the very old ruins with a rendering of what the structure would have looked like back in the day.
I have a book like that that was done for another town to the East of here.
That town far east of here, its old main street was itself a victim of changing times and needs and power shifts.
Comparing the two towns rise and fall is of course just an exercise of my own nonsense and penchant for automatically veering off on another tangent when I write. A symptom of my adult A.D.D. affliction I suppose, I tend to stray after a bit.
One of these towns is less than a couple hundred years old, the other town well over two thousand years old.
Honest to God I don't know what point I was trying to make writing this post, if any point at all.
I started out writing about an attempt to walk off some excess calories then it evolved into reliving some ancient childhood memories then it metamorphosed into wonderment of an ancient and extremely brutal culture.
Chasing rabbits. That's what old time preachers called it when they strayed off their intended biblical topic.
Choose your own cliche, as usual I have wasted enough of your time.
Those who about to blog salute you!
SPQR
3 comments:
I don't know your point, either, but I really was with you in your memories of the theater, the old stores, etc.
And the BOWLING MASSAGE realization that her name was Bowling cracked me up because I thought the same thing "How do you incorporate THOSE?" :-)
I really enjoyed reading this and was with you all the way down Main Street!
Z
I liked the walk, thanks for letting me tag along.
Thank you both for being with me!
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