Nostalgia
 

On our road trip we took a couple nostalgic ventures. One was to Dan Baileys Fly Shop, a place I went to with my Dad many times. As a kid I was fascinated with the tables of ladies tying trout flies. It's still there in the same place but it's a shadow of it's former self.

I still can't decide if it was a good idea.

fltsfshr

Well, there is that old saying that you can't go home again. I went down to Camp Bryan in NC several times in recent years, but it just is not the same place it was when I grew up there fishing and having good times with my aunt and uncle. In those years, even though the members were wealthy, all the houses were real cabins, with no phones for a long time. Now large permanent homes have replaced some of those cabins and kids spend their time riding around on ATVs and not really out fishing or boating on the beautiful lakes. Sad...and of course all the old members I knew have long since died and the younger generations are strangers to me. Hard to believe my uncle died almost 40 years ago. :(

So true. When my Uncle died at age 93 we went to his service in my hometown of Baltimore. I grew up in a row house in a blue collar section named Hampden. Now the millennials
have taken over and have rehabbed a lot of the homes in the area. The old haunts I hung out at are gone replaced by Boutique shops and designer coffee shops. But the area has been revitalized and it is now a famous tourist attraction.

Every now and again I go back to the neighborhood in Brooklyn where I grew up. My folks bought their house new in 1959 and I lived with them until 1976. It was a great place to grow up. Now when I go back I don't recognize the area. The twigs that we planted in hope that they'd grow to become street trees have now grown and are very big. A number of the houses have been bulldozed and replaced by ostentatious McMansions that look funny on the postage stamp sized lots that they sit on. Back then there were kids outside all day. When we go back there are none, and the bases that we painted on Bassett Ave for our softball games are gone. Only second base, which is actually a manhole cover, is still there.

I remember the public school, PS 100 as being so big, but now it looks very small to me when I pass it.

On the way home, we often stop in Sheepshead Bay. The fishing boats are still there but almost none of the old-time restaurants are. Randazzo's is still there serving seafood with an Italian accent and it's still as crowded, noisy, rude and as much fun as it always was, but all the rest of the restaurants have been replaced by Russian restaurants. Coney Island is still there and so is Nathan's Famous and the Cyclone, but Carolina (on Mermaid Avenue), the best Italian restaurant in all of Brooklyn (and possibly the world) is gone.

My folks sold their house in 1983 and I left Brooklyn for Manhattan in 1976. In spite of the fact that I've been out of Brooklyn for almost 45 years, there's still a lot of Brooklyn in me.

When I lived in Lakewood, a suburb of Denver, Colorado years ago, the 25 miles of mostly open spaces between Denver and Boulder were wide and lonesome. Golden was completely separate small town containing only The Colorado School of Mines and the Coors Brewery. Now there are no more open spaces. Denver, Boulder and Golden are virtually one single city with only signs for marking boundaries. In college I commuted from Denver for the first two years before moving to Boulder. When driving now from Denver to Boulder I remember a completely different landscape and traffic pattern. Ich verstehe die Welt nicht mehr!! LOL

Yeah! Golden, CO’s growth has expanded exponentially within the last few years. Lately Its city counsel has proposed growth limitations. The recent influx of out-of-state residents have been somewhat overwhelming.

Here’s a recent photo of Golden’s growth taken from Mt. Zion (Lookout Mountain) showing Denver's encroachment and the continuous stream of lights from Denver into Golden’s borders.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.s2k...88d4296236.jpg

Way back in the 70s, I was working with scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Went out to Boulder for a meeting. A group of us went up to Golden to this cool restaurant inside an old hotel. There was almost nothing in that town. Times have changed!!!

We stayed in Golden a couple years ago. They had a great car show parade down their main street. I will confess to peeing in the creek ahead of the Coors brewery. In college Coors was known as Bunny P*** and anyone who went skiing out there brought back a couple cases for the bunnies.
More Nostalgia
:LOL: :LOL :LOL

fltsfshr

A few weeks ago, I drove by the house I grew up in. A woman was sitting on the porch. I asked if I could take a photo of the house to share with my siblings. She was most pleasant. The house is rather run down, but no changes to the neighborhood. The owner has now lived there for 38 years. I was one of six kids and she told me she had five (or maybe six?) children herself. I told her it was a happy house. Looking back it was. Our income was pretty low, but so was the income of most of the kids we went to school with. Still, we were happy innocent kids, making do with what we had and appreciating the simple things, like a Sunday drive (not so much that part) but the ice cream that was the treat after the drive.

I think I may have mentioned this is in the "shoot the breeze" thread, if so I apologize for repeating myself.

I really prefer German Reinheitsgebot style beers to most American rice beer swill. But earlier on I used to drink a lot of Coors. When I first moved to Texas (but not directly from Colorado) Coors was still a relatively smaller brewery that did not market its beer outside of Colorado. When I would travel back to Colorado I would have requests from Texas friends to “bring me some Coors ok?” So I transported many a case of beer in my little car, from Denver down to Houston — until Coors could be legally marketed in Texas.

[Never ever considered that ‘Rocky Mountain Spring Water’ might have Florida ski visitors’ ‘p**s’ in it!, I guess if ya gotta go, ya gotta go] hahahahaha