Ghosts of the Past

So we were trying to decide where to go to dinner on Sunday. We wanted Mexican and the options were to try something new or stick to the places we love. Its an interesting problem. But we found three relatively new places near us and examined the menus and decided on one.

Side note – finding a menu can be harder than you think. Since all of these places were family owned, their presence on social media varied quite a bit. It was easy to find the sites where you could order for delivery but some of those aren’t easy to navigate.

Not really the topic of the post but I’ll let you know that the food at this place was wonderful and it was definitely a great choice.

It turns out that this restaurant is in a space that used to be occupied by a Vietnamese restaurant which we liked but, for some reason, stopped going to. The owner of that place looked to be an older lady and maybe there was nobody to take over so she got out.

Before that it was a Chinese place with great noodle dishes that morphed into a sushi place before closing to be taken over by the Vietnamese place.

But nobody has gutted the place so there are still things left over from the previous incarnations. They are painted differently but the underlying structure is still the same. We’ve been to other places like this where you can see evidence of what used to be but is no longer.

Guess that happens when you’ve been in a place for a bit. Very little remains the same. Stores and restaurants come and go. Houses get torn down when commercial property encroaches and people think the land is more valuable as half empty office complexes or strip malls. Farms are turned into ugly houses packed tightly together just so people can live away from the city.

Sometimes I can’t help but do the “remember when” thing when driving by sites. There is a spot that went through two Italian restaurants and is now being turned into office space (they tore down the restaurant). I mention this because when I was working, we went there many times for birthday lunches. There have to be lots of memories in these places and I wonder if some part of that energy just hangs around.

It is also why I’m a member of a couple of “vanished” Facebook groups. One for the place I grew up and one for the place I’ve lived for the last oh so many years. Hard to believe that I’ve been here long enough to have memories of things that have “vanished”.

“Well time slips away and leave with nothing, mister but boring stories of ..”

I hope not. To be fair, the stories likely aren’t boring to those who lived through the same times. If we all have memories of something that “vanished”, then it would just be a trip down memory lane. But you can’t live in the past and life rolls on and things get erased. Maybe that’s why I just find those glimpses of what used to be so interesting.