1. Our yearly walk to the pumpkin patch, which was at a creepy old abandoned farm house. I always picked out a 50lb pumpkin and had to carry it home. Never ended well.
2. The library, housed in a turn of the century mansion. Tiny collection, hugely cozy. And usually empty except for me and Mrs. Linden, the librarian.
3. The Corn Festival, every August. A teenage dream would be crowned corn queen, and I would spend all my allowance trying to win a Duran Duran mirror for my bedroom from a toothless carnival worker.
As we exited the highway, something caught my eye and I squealed, grabbing Winston and demanding he turn around so I could get a picture. What I saw was something that gave me a huge pang of nostalgia for my childhood: an abandoned corner used car lot. Where I grew up, there were all these little tiny car lots that had maybe 15 cars on the lot. I'm sure there are parts of the Midwest that still have a few, but honestly there can't be many. This one in particular had been slated for demolition (because the world needs another drug store) and held fond memories for me.
Someone had already stolen it, but it used to have this funny mailbox out front with a friendly sign on it that said "Place your best offer inside! We'll call you back!" I thought that was so funny as a kid. I used to scream at my dad from the backseat, "Daddy! Let's put a note inside for $1! They have a Trans Am!! We can get a Trans Am for a $1!" Imagine... a part time car lot with a handful of used cars on it where you communicated with the owners by passing notes! That day is gone, baby, gone.
We had to park a bit away, because there is a great deal of construction booming around this tiny relic: drugstores, gas stations, the Little Gym, Chipotle, etc. Lorain County used to be the sticks; now it's all cul-de-sacs and shopping plazas. None of that was there when I was a kid; this place used to sit at the corner of nothing and a cemetery. We trudged through a field of weeds and construction supplies to get some pictures.
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| I would totally buy a car from here. |
Anyway, it got me thinking about other things that I don't see anymore. For example, you don't see pickup trucks full of little league baseball players going for ice cream any more. Remember that? A whole pickup truck full of dusty kids all screaming, "We're #1! We're #1! on their way with their coach to Dairy Queen. I did that exactly 3 times. But not because we were #1. They were pity trips.
My dad had three sons, but apparently that wasn't enough. One afternoon, he informed me I was going to play baseball.
My Dad: Dana, honey, Daddy signed you up for baseball! Won't that be fun? Play with the other kids, make some friends!
Me: I don't want to play baseball. I don't know how. And I'm too busy fishing.
My Dad: I'll teach you. And you don't fish.
Me: Yes, I do! See, here is my stick and I sit on the picnic table and I catch all sorts of fish in the backyard. And then I play with my worms.
My Dad: You're playing baseball and making friends and that's final!! Here, take your brother's mitt.
( I loved to play with my worm friends. I would dig them up, and then take them for rides on my bike. Then I would be all sad because they dried up and died. Then I would have an elaborate funeral. All summer long.)
I remember standing there with my brother's mitt, staring at the pretty stitching and thinking it looked dirty, when WHAP. Next thing I knew, I was on the ground and my mouth was bleeding. My dad ran me in the house, yelling, "Oh my God! You've got to get your glove up!"
My Mom: What happened?!?!
My Dad: I was trying to teach her how to catch and she just stood there and the ball hit her in the mouth. She starts baseball this weekend.
My Mom: This ought to be interesting.
I played three years and every team I was on sucked that much harder because I was on it. I couldn't swing, but I had a natural ability to take a hit in the ankle and get a base. I spent a great deal of time with a bag of ice on my leg. I couldn't catch, so they created a position for me that the coach called "second right fielder." Basically, I stood behind the right fielder in case something rolled my way. But even then, I was so busy making birds nests out of grass or just laying there that I missed those too. I remember my dad hauling ass to the deep deep outfield, where I lay singing songs I made up, screaming at me to at least stand up and look like I was paying attention. Which would make me cry. Three years. It took that man three years to realize I wasn't baseball material. He could have just looked at me. Here are some pictures I dug out that, I think, demonstrate that I was better off at home alone fishing off the picnic table and murdering worms.
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| That's me on the left. I usually wore my grandmothers' old clothes. My favorite was her old 2-way girdle. I think I wore it every day, with a belt. That's my cousin, Rachelle (sorry, sweetie!) who was stylin'. |
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| I had some sweet lounging slacks for everyday. |
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| I also spent hours dropping shit into the sewer. |
Anyway, at the end of every losing season, the coach would load us into his pickup truck and take us to the ice cream stand. We yelled, "We're #1!" and the coach would yell back for us to "shut up." It has been years since I saw a truck full of elated children driving down the street, screaming out the back of a truck. My kids will never do that, God knows, because they inherited my athletic ability. And there's all sorts of kill joy laws against it, too.
You're probably asking yourself, "Those pictures of the abandoned used car lot are poignant, but did you steal anything?"
You bet your ass we did. :)
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| Anne, watching for the po-po. |
