A Bit of the Past

As I was taking my mother to a doctor's appointment north of town we drove past the area where we lived when I was a toddler.  We were sitting at a traffic light at the intersection when we both noticed that the Park Row restaurant had been demolished and replaced by a Tim Horton's doughnut shop. 

My memory of the Park Row was that it was a nice restaurant with good food that both my first husband and then later Denny and I enjoyed.  The restaurant unfortunately went badly downhill when sold by the original owners.  My mom told me that I had actually gone there much earlier and that the Park Row was where I had my first Shirley Temple.  It seems that my parents and another couple that lived in the same apartment complex nearby would walk over to the Park Row to have dinner once a week.  One evening the waitress was so impressed by my good behavior (part good training by my mother/part fear of my father) and adorable-ness (which hasn't changed) she offered to bring me a Shirley Temple as a reward.  Apparently I thought I was hot sh*t after that (which also hasn't changed) because I had a "drink" like the grownups. 

I don't remember that at all actually.  I have two distinct memories from that period of living at the apartment complex.  The first was playing in the grassy common area between the two rows of apartments trying to catch lightning bugs (fire flies) and having one of them fly halfway down my throat.  I guess I would have been okay with that if it hadn't been for my father telling me he could see it lighting up my throat.  Aaarrrggghhhh!

The second memory was of the two boys living upstairs from us.  Their mother would baby-sit me occasionally and they treated me with affection for the most part, but they snookered me every time they caught me outside with a bag of M&Ms.  You see, they would pretend to be "doggies" begging for a treat so I would feed them the M&Ms and before I knew it, my bag would be empty and I wouldn't have gotten but one or two of them.  Sigh.  Yet I fell for it again and again, because I thought those big boys were wonderful. 

Mom and I had fun reminiscing as we drove through downtown Dayton where we gawked at all the changes that have been made.  There's something about the cocoon of the car that provokes intimacy and the sharing of memories.

They say you can't go home again, but they're wrong.