A walk in my town

Yesterday I had to drop my van off to get new brakes and I realized I had my camera with me. I decided to snap some pictures to share with you. This is the town I grew up in and the town where I still live. There are like 2500 people in my little town. It is officially a village, actually.

Here we go:

This is me beginning my walk from Gaier's Garage to work at the school.
This is were I dropped my van off. I used to ride my bike past it on the way to our little grocery store to get candy.

This is the Dairy King. Not Dairy Queen--Dairy King. It looks basically the same as it did when I was a kid. Of course the price of a small cone back then was like a quarter. Moving along...
See that grey building? It is now part of the Historical Society, but when I was a kid, it was the town library. Man, I loved that place. It was tiny, and floor to ceiling books. It had that wonderful bookish smell. There was a machine that imprinted the due date on the card that went in the back pocket of your book. Ka-thunk! That's what the machine sounded like when it made the imprint. I longed to ask if I could try it, but never had the nerve to actually ask.

This is the museum in our town. When I was a kid, it was only open occasionally. They would put up a sign that said, Museum Open Today. Let me just tell you, if I saw that sign, you can bet I'd stop in. There were things from the founding of our town by Peter Loramie. There was an old fashioned candy counter where you could get a long licorice whip. If you went upstairs, they had my favorite room. You could step into the room a couple feet, but were prevented from going in any further by three panes of glass. This room was known as the doll room. They had all kinds of old fashioned dolls and buggies for them. I would eat my licorice and look at all the dolls.

This used to be the town hardware store, and it was just down the street from where I lived. Why would I show you a picture of that? Well, it was relevant to my life this reason: they had a machine to make keys. And my sister and I were always losing our house keys. We'd bring the spare key up to Don Braun, (aka-Braun Braun) and have him make duplicates for us for a dollar and five cents. I am sure he thought we were crazy, and wondered why we had so many keys made, but boy was it convenient for staying out of trouble. Thinking back, there were probably dozens of copies of our house key floating around town.

This is the view down the street from the hardware store. See the white house on the right? That's my mom and dad's house, where I grew up.

There is the house where I grew up. It was built in the 1800's, and was said to be haunted. It wasn't and isn't. Unless you count the bat we discovered last night. It sure scared my dad.
And this is the view from my mom and dad's house. It is the only church in our town. St. Michael's Catholic Church. We never had a good excuse for being late to church on Sundays, though we often walked in right before the priest did.

This is the school where I spent nine years. From Kindergarten through eighth grade I walked the half block to get here. This year is it's final year. They are currently builing a new school behind it. They will demolish the old school next summer, I believe. It is needed, but it will be bittersweet. There are a lot of memories that were created there. My own grandmother, who was born in 1907, went to school in the oldest part of the building.

And finally, here is the cafeteria. It is where I ate all my lunches, and where I now work. And that is the reason it is also the last picture in my walk. Thank you for keeping me company along the way.