Trip Down Memory Lane

I wrote the text that follows as it flowed from my thoughts after a day trip to the place I had grown up. Rambling as memories filled my head.
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It was a day off and I drove north to meet my sister for lunch near where we had grown up. Since my parents have been gone, I haven’t ventured to this location often. I decided to drive on a side road rather than the expressway, which took me past many places with memories on my trip.

First I saw the small apartment complex I had lived in during my first years of teaching. A bit further up the road was the river where I’d fed ducks with my husband when we were dating. After that I passed the high school where my first students would continue their education. The road turned north on a bend and I knew that if I had continued west I would have headed toward the house where my husband and his family had lived during this time. Approaching a town further on I passed a sign for the “Elegant Farmer” an amazing market where we would sometimes shop.

A school came in to view and I remembered the track meets from high school held there. I had only traveled halfway to my destination and couldn’t help but be amazed at the memories that had already surfaced. As I continued on my journey I came to a small town with only a few shops and recalled coming here for ice cream. The road wove on and approached the high school some of my friends from church attended. I thought about the football and basketball games I had attended there with them in my teens. I drove on and passed the Wales School for Boys, a school for juvenal offenders and contemplated the times our church youth group visited the facility trying to encourage these young men to follow a different path.

A state park sign pointed right and brought to mind the many times I had climbed the tower there or hiked the trails. My destination was close and I was astounded by how many stores were now present along the way. So much had changed; time had carved out new places o changed those that had been there when I was growing up.

I pulled in to the parking lot and saw a Perkins that had once been a family restaurant I had waited tables at while first out of high school and during the summers between my years at college. I recalled the crazy customers we’d encounter during our third shifts and the friendships, now forgotten, from those shared experiences.

Just a bit up the road was the entrance to the county park nestled along the lake shore. A park I had visited many times, perhaps the most memorable was when my best friend from high school and I went there on a picnic with the man that would become her husband a few years later.

My sister arrived and we set off together for a restaurant we had eaten at with our parents years ago. We passed a waterfront restaurant that had once been a bar with a well known green drink called the “Leprechaun Kick.”

Arriving our lunch destination I still remembered when the “Lumber Inn” was a local lumberyard before it was turned into the restaurant be one of our former Sunday School teachers and her husband. After lunch we walked around this once quant little town. In place of the pharmacy, bakery and barbershop we found small gift, yarn and clothing shops. How foreign it all seemed that these staples from our childhood were gone.

We decided to drive out past our old house. On the way we saw condos where once cottages had been, large house along the lake where small bars had been and a confusing set of maze-like turnabouts where we had rode our bikes. Approaching Elm Street we came to a turn lane to this dead end street. The small farm field was still on the north side of the street with houses on the south along the water. Most houses had been updated, increasing in size and only faintly resembling those from our childhood while other hadn’t seemed to change at all. Our childhood house was still gray in color, but was otherwise unrecognizable.

Today was more than a lunch and shopping date with my sister. It was a trip down memory lane connecting me to the past. This is where I grew up, it helped shaped me into the person I am today. I was reconnected to my childhood, my teenage years, college days and even my first teaching job. It’s true you can’t go home again, but you can always drive down the roads that took you there, remembering yesterday.