SEVEN: A DECADE IDEAL

That was an old place where there was a K-Mart and a burger joint. It wasn’t sketchy, dangerous, but was just right. The richies got a hold of it and put gates up, made boutiques. Once you see a boutique, well, more than one, that is the beginning of the end or at least a marker that a change in collar color is happening. God, how it went over the top. To show off is one thing, sure, - most everyone is guilty of it at one time or another…but now…it’s like a joke but you aren’t really supposed to laugh. Well, they won’t look at you, and sometimes the men wear scarves. Ain’t no scuffs on the shoes. If you sing a song of back in the day, you are alone with your song, but you gotta sing it anyhow. We went down there and the coolest movie theatre (which they promptly got rid of in the takeover), was down some escalators. It was like a world within a world. Mid-eighties. Summer or winter wouldn’t matter. It was all great. They used to have these little trees that grew in the middle of the place. Not anymore, - just plastic replicas and a lot of restaurant signs whose names can’t be pronounced. Not by me anyways. Then, though, - the plaid shirts and the popcorn. The atmosphere. In the spring before the rains everything looked dirty outside and it yet it was beautiful. The old running track and Van Morrison songs played somehow out of a speaker. The air-brakes on the bus would sound and it was an urban sunset mixed with wires, clouds. Civilization but not overly civilized, and the ancient setting star.