I brought my laptop to Jerome’s over on Atlantic Avenue but can’t find a wireless signal here. I’m sitting in the waiting room reading old Newsweeks while they put new brakes on our car. They are the best car shop in town. I used to just walk home while they worked on our car but we moved out of the neighborhood. Alan, who retired a while back but still checks in, is smoking at the desk. It smells fantastic. I miss small does of secondhand smaoke. Alan talks to himself these days. I find myself doing that more too as I get older. Igor, a mechanic who has been here for years, has his own stable of Russian customers. One couple just stopped in to pick up their car and they looked like something right out of Diane Arbus photo.
I drove by Sparky‘s house on way here. His lawn needs mowing. I used to do that when I lived over here. Maybe I’ll check in on him on my way home. He stops by our new place often and keeps us up to date with our old neighbors. Some of the people who lived on our street when we first moved into this neighborhood are still here but just barely. Their spouses have died and now they are struggling to stay in their homes.
Elite Bakery used to be next door to Jerome’s but it’s gone and Leo’s Bakery is too. They merged and moved out to East Rochester. PCI Studios used to be right next door. They started as a chemical company but morphed into a recording studio somehow. We recorded a version of “Love Never Thinks” and Rich Stim’s “So Hard” in there back in the eighties. The windows are all boarded shut now.
Alan keeps mumbling, “What the hell is goin’ on here”.
3 Comments
I guess some of us are getting a little older, and it does bring some contentment–even that comes with a dulling of the senses and . . . forgetting who you are! I have achieved certain sublime moods that allow me to enjoy things I used to scorn. I now actually find ecstasy in walking very slowly back, after unloading groceries into the car, with the shopping cart at Wegmans, and putting it in the cue. I was once far too impatient for that, and used to resentfully shove it against the nearest guardrail.
Talking to yourself is not a problem. Its when you start talking back & getting into arguments with yourself that you start to cross a line.
Very fine line there, ds. (Or perhaps I just reveal I have crossed it.)