24 May 2006

My grandparents used to live up in the north suburbs, my grands and my great-aunt and -uncle, only a few blocks away. Then my grands moved to Nebraska, and Aunt Dor and Uncle Rudy moved to Fridley, which is also north suburbs but not the part I saw much in my childhood, and then Aunt Dor and Uncle Rudy moved to Phoenix. Another great-aunt and -uncle live up north still, but it's fairly easy for us to get to and from Columbia Heights without seeing much of anything from my childhood.

But yesterday, we took a scenic route on one of the legs of our journey, and it took us right past Brookdale, the mall nearest my grandparents' former house and therefore the mall of my childhood, the location of the real Santa, etc. "Did you know," I said to Timprov later in tones of great discovery, "that Brookdale doesn't have a Donaldson's any more?" And he clutched his head and howled, because Donaldson's has not been a part of Brookdale since...since...well, I think since one of the Reagan presidencies, but I can't swear to which one.

It's weird, though. They have a Barnes and Noble now. They used to have a teeny little B. Dalton's where I bought some of my earliest fantasy and science fiction (that is, some of the earliest stuff I bought with that label on it), and even then, I already owned about a third of the section and knew I didn't want another third. And now they have a huge bookstore with an actual SF section with actual SF in it.

(This entry interrupted by the arrival of food poisoning, sending the entire first half of my week down the -- well, I think that part is obvious enough. Bleh. More when I'm healthy.)