Small farming community, mid/late 60s. Accross the street was a ma and pa type grocery store. I’m picturing it about the size of a 7-11. Occasionally, I would go across the street and look for pennies that someone dropped. A penny was a piece of candy.
Last month I went back to the same place. The store is long gone. The house I lived in is still there, along with some of the houses I remember. The corn field that behind the house is now a subdivision.
Speaking of Silver Spring:
Dale Music closed a few years back after over 60 years in business.
Even before Discovery came to town and the entire downtown area changed, the Champion’s Billiards down by Silver Spring Ave closed. It was one of the prime school-skipping spots in town.
I do sorta miss old, scary Silver Spring from the early 90s with Tastee Diner on the corner of Georgia and Wayne, the Texaco across the street, the McDonald’s a block down, and the gas station at Georgia and Colesville, which is oddly the only thing from that era that still remains (Tastee survives but was moved). The armory was still being dismantled and most of the downtown area was just a big hole. It was really not a safe place and those were the only things down there, but I loved it that way.
Not home, but 20 years ago we would take a short drive to the local ice cream shop and get chili cheese dogs (the hot dogs were deep fried), waffle fries and lemonade and then we would get ice cream for dessert. The shop’s still there, but they stopped serving hot dogs and fries.
Speaking of ice cream, the last Farrell’s just closed in June. I attended many birthday parties there and we always got at least one Zoo sundae.
That’s sad. The last time I ate at a Ferrell’s was about thirty years ago when they still had one in San Jose. Shortly after getting our burgers I noticed the staff passing into and out of the kitchen a lot, and each time the door opened a bit of smoke (not steam) would come out. One staffer made a phone call and a minute later, our server came up and said, “Um, would you mind leaving the building? Don’t worry about the bill.”
We took our burgers with us but had to abandon the fries. The fire department arrived as we were standing in the parking lot, munching on them.
My Grandfathers house is on the market again. In the 80’s, my father sold it for 30K, now it is listed for 500K, and I don’t recognize it. Between now and then, the garage was removed, a second floor with 4 bedrooms was added, and the first floor floor plan was changed totally. I think the basement was dug out, as nobody over 5’9" could have stood upright.
If my Grandfather was still around, with all his marbles, he would be hard pressed to know where he was, short of the number on the house.
My wife’s alma mater decided to go co-ed a few years ago. Given that she considered it’s being an all-girls school essential to its mission, she will very likely never again set foot on its campus nor send them a dollar more in financial support.
I grew up in Ft. Gratiot, Michigan, a suburb, if you will, of Port Huron. When they duplicated the original bridge to Ontario in the mid 1990’s, they had to tear up a lot of favorite childhood places in order to make room for the new bridge structures, and the re-worked customs plazas, etc.
My favorite destroyed place was the old London’s dairy and bottling plant. The main public function was as an ice cream shoppe, hand scooped. Everyone had their personal favorites, but for me, it was the shakes mixed in metal canisters, served in glass glasses, along with the metal container with the remaining shake. And because it was also a bona fide bottling plant, there was about 120 feet of window along the back where the entire bottling plant was visible. I still think that all of this awesome automation influenced me to do what I do today, which, while ignoring details, is manufacturing engineering.
Just about every year from age 6 to 14, I spent a week or two camping at Spirit Lake, either with my family or with the Boy Scouts, as well as a few times in the next six years. I remember my grandfather worrying that three of us would be eaten by bears if we took the canoe and camped on the far side, and I remember hearing Nixon’s resignation speech while camping there.
Last time I saw the lake was from the Johnston Ridge viewpoint, more than two miles away. It was still choked with timber from the blast. Maybe some day we will hike down there from the other side.
WOW! Hermoine, I’m from Illinois, but moved to Cherry Hill, NJ in 1978, 8 years old. (East Cherry Hill, near Kresson & 73) I remember Holly Ravine Farm. My sister worked at the Echelon movie theater. I saw Empire Strikes Back there. Played all the video games each time, especially Battlezone. (Remember the Echelon logo before the movie? It was an “e” that rolled out to a jazz beat sand spurted out “echelon”)
I almost wrote in to write about the movie theater. I’ll also mention Olga’s Diner a few miles away on the Route 70/73 circle, which was gone 10 years ago. Same with the Diner. Was up for sale and stood empty for years.