Old Camp Grounds

My wife hates it when I write about the old days or revisit my past in some blog. I’m not sure why this bothers her since I’ve still got my feet stuck firmly in the present. Now, with social media sites like Facebook (and specific groups within), any of us can go back to revisit our hometown or familiar ‘old haunts’ with just a couple of simple key strokes.

There’s even is a group page for my community, a nice but rather non-descript third ring suburb which began as Lebanon Hills and then back in the 70s was re-crowned Apple Valley. You name the hometown and there’s probably an ‘Old________’ Facebook page for it. Recently, I saw that an old acquaintance of mine, who had left Minnesota years ago, has found a group page just focused on the small town where she was born and raised. I’ve done the same with several ‘Old Saint Paul’ Facebook group sites. We’re both now privy to the old camp grounds and can reflect on how its changed over time.

Revisiting one’s past can be part of reflecting on a life lived for so long. Not all of us get the opportunity to do that. It also helps explain just how we got to where we are today. Despite what my cloaked-in-black advisors told me back in grade school and high school, thinking about oneself isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Pride isn’t the sin we were once told it was. I came, I saw, I conquered some of the time. For that, I get to look back in anger, forgiveness, pride, and deep, deep appreciation for the life I’ve lived thus far even if most of the landmarks are long since gone.

The fact is that so many, if not almost all, of the landmarks, monuments and structures that played a background part of my youth and young adulthood have vanished. It’s a past history that only exists now in old black and white photos, old documentaries and textbook illustrations. It’s the result of decades of growth and change and evolution and bringing with it an erasure of any physical evidence of those places that once encompassed my life as I grew up.

Granted, we’re talking about a period of over eighty years. My grade school is gone. My high school has changed its stripes. My college is now a university and my first employer (minus time spent on the University of Minnesota Minneapolis campus) has decamped for downtown St. Paul.

Normal evolution and urban development have erased any and all vestiges of those times past. It’s almost as if they never existed in the first place. Beginning with early homesteads on Smith Avenue, Exchange Street and Randolph Avenue. The first two are devoid of any housing stock and the third has increased in value a thousand-fold over time.

My hippie hangouts in Dinky Town have been replaced with towering student high rises and a ‘tiny Target.’

KTCA, the old public television station on Como Avenue has moved downtown. The Neuman Center moved off campus and the West Bank has changed colors and flavors since I hung out there. My old favorite bar is now an off-site treatment center.

But it’s not just local landmarks that have disappeared. WTVS, the public television station in Chattanooga, Tennessee bears little resemblance to the Southern enclave of rednecks and cowboys when I came there as a ‘Yankee’ back in the early seventies. MCPB, Maryland Public Television, has evolved over time and now my time period spent there is now considered their ‘Camelot years.’

Each new generation has created, found and/or changed any semblance of what used to be. My old hangouts, dens of iniquity, lodging, love-making, entertainment and employment are but dust in that memory bank called my past life.

Now when my grandchildren ask me about the fabulous fifties, the turbulent sixties, the seventies and beyond, I can only smile. It’s all there (or some of it) in those Facebook group sites and in my mind. But I don’t have any real landmarks we can visit anymore.

There are only old photos, sketchy memories and true embellishments that only a Papa can spin to the delight of eager and receptive young ears. It was the best of times and…