Whew!! For a minit there, I thought WordPress was NOT gonna let me back into Funny.
But amazingly, after a few tries it gave up and dropped me into the website. Weird.
Why is everything weird? And have you noticed that some days stuff is weirder than on other days? Why, I ask. WHY?
Ohhhhh well. I’m back from a hot, miserable stroll to the neighborhood shopping center, there to stock up on my favorite inebriants. (To wit: one bottle of cheap white wine…)
That mall has the sweetest little liquor store. And I do mean LITTLE. The shop couldn’t be any larger than my dining room. The two guys who run it are just plain nice. Always quiet, always friendly, always accommodating. You come away wanting to go back soon.
Walking up there and back provides an opportunity to pass along the street where SDXB and I lived when we first moved into the ‘Hood.
Oh, my: I loved that little stretch of MittelAmerica. The neighbors — mostly middle- to lower-middle-class types — were such nice folks. The houses were (still are!!) modest but nicely kept up.
We moved out when the City installed the Accursed Lightrail up the middle of Main Drag West, kindly bringing endless noise, crazy traffic, and crowds of bums and flakes. We didn’t move far away — actually, we’re still in the ‘Hood — but just a couple of blocks worked to get us away from the CLANG CLANG CLANG of the accursed lightrail and from most of the bums the lightrail hauled into the ‘Hood.
Walking back from the booze shop took me up the street where SDXB and I used to live, past the homes of all those beloved neighbors. My, I do miss them: about half of them have moved to other precincts; the rest have died or ended up in nursing homes. Such good people!
But — returning to the topic of an earlier paragraph — there is something weird about it.
There’s a strangeness to revisiting a cluster where you used to live.
And a strangeness to knowing most of your friends and neighbors are gone…but a few are still there.
A weirdness to walking up the street and hearing sounds that didn’t exist when you lived there.
A pleasing eeriness to encountering a friendly, glad-to-meetcha owner at the wine shop.
…The wine shop that didn’t exist when you lived there.