The More Things Change

A few years ago, I joined a Facebook group focused on the town where I grew up. It is really more of a nostalgia site where people can post things about places they remembered. There are updates whenever a long time business or store shuts down. In a weirdly random event, someone posted a team picture of a Little League team I was on. That was odd.

Because of the algorithms, I get shown a lot of random posts from various news organizations in the area. I’ll open them up from time to time (which probably is why the algo keeps feeding them to me). It is how I learned about the ice cream shop closing that I wrote about a little while ago.

Before continuing, a mini rant on Facebook which I still use but not something I’m really fond of. When it was originally a way to keep in touch with people you don’t see everyday, I liked it. Now it is littered with ads and other random posts from groups that may or may not be connected to other things I’ve looked at. I think a lot of the people I’m friends with either have given up or severely reduced their activity on the site so it really is no longer a good way to keep in touch.

Anyway, I saw another post from a news site about business closing. As usual, they don’t list the name in the title of the post because if they did that, you’d have no incentive to click on and read the post. So it was something like “beloved business to close”.

What I found was that the bakery in the beach town where my parents retired to was closing after many years in business. I think the current owners had run the place for 45 years or something and they were retiring and shutting the place down. Not sure if they tried to find anyone to take over since the article didn’t mention that. But at about the same time the ice cream places closes, the bakery will shut down as well.

Was it the best bakery in the world? Not really. For us, I think it was more a small town charm kind of thing. It was the only bakery in town and they also served breakfast so it was a place we’d visit a lot on our trips up there. Think the nieces and nephews were more crushed by the news since they started going up there as small children when bakery treats were a little more special.

But it was the place where a lot of the old time locals used to hang out. The few times we ate breakfast there, that seemed to be the general mix in the place. Wonder where they’ll go now.

Have no idea what they’ll do with the space. Probably put in something a little more trendy to appeal to the newer tourist crowd. Overpriced beach themed items maybe or a trendy brew pub place. That seems to be where things are going there. Might not be bad but certainly won’t have the same charm or feel.

I know nothing remains the same and the town had been taking on a different feel for years. When my parents first moved there, it was still kind of a sleepy little beach town. Yes, it got crowded on the weekends but it still felt more small town than anything.

I’m actually glad my parents aren’t still around. The town they fell in love with is being replaced by something else and I know they would have been sad to see it happen.