i let things go since they will be destroyed anyway

When I was a kid, I had a friend who was really into a certain magazine and had three-foot-high stacks of them in his room, situated just to the side of the door and against the wall. Something like two or three of those stacks. And no, that's not an exaggeration. The only reason the stacks weren't higher is because they would start falling over if they went any higher. He was a bit of a hoarder, even as a kid.

I saw that, thumbed through a few of the magazines (it was Mad, by the way), thought they were neat, and started buying copies of my own since they were cheap. After a few months of doing that, I asked dad if he ever bought any Mad magazines when he was younger. He said he did, so I then asked if he ever kept any of them. He said he didn't. I replied to that with something along the lines of, "Aww! They'd be worth a lot of money today!" He just shrugged it off. And he was correct not to keep them, because vintage copies of Mad never truly became anything valuable.

Only one store local to me at the time sold Mad, a card and gift shop. I look online to see if that store is still around. Nope. That didn't surprise me.

But then I did a deeper dive, and found out two things.

First, that store was originally registered in 1967. I thought wow, neat.

Second, that business was dissolved...

...in 1988.

Oh.

Yeah, I didn't even know that until before I wrote this. That one hit me, because it means the store was gone even before I got my first driver's license.

The building still stands, so the place where the card shop used to be wasn't technically destroyed.

But another place I recently found out the fate of is a different story.

As a kid, a special occasion was when the family used to go to a Chinese restaurant that originally opened in 1974. Every time the family went either once or twice a year, we'd always order the exact same thing, the Pu Pu Platter. It was always good.

This Chinese joint legitimately looked like a restaurant you'd find in a theme park, even though it was located in very plain part of town. The most exciting thing near it was a convenience store across the street. That restaurant installed all their pseudo-upscale designs back in the mid-'70s and never changed, which was part of its charm. Inside, the place was divided into themed rooms, and the one the family always picked was the Fountain Room, because it had an actual operating fountain in the middle of it. That was neat.

Other than the restaurant changing its sign once since the old one was so beat up that it needed to be replaced, this Chinese place looked exactly the same for almost 50 years.

Yeah, almost 50 years.

In 2022, that restaurant burned to the ground. Literally.

Arson was how the place got destroyed. Arson by whom? Just some guy that liked to set fire to restaurants in the local area for whatever reason. The guy was found, arrested, and actually admitted that yeah, it was him. And the guy was married with a four-year-old kid. I've no idea why he liked to torch restaurants. Maybe he hated his wife. Maybe his kid ruined his prized Funko Pop collection and the guy took out his frustration by setting fire to buildings. Who knows.

The place where that Chinese restaurant stood was cleaned up, and now it's just an empty parking lot that will most likely stay that way.

Not only can I never go to that restaurant ever again, no building exists where it used to be.

Oh.

That one also hit me, and definitely more so than the card shop closing did. A card shop is a whatever thing, but family memories were made at that tacky Chinese restaurant. It would be one thing if the restaurant owner closed shop and some other business took the building, but that's not what happened. The building burned down. Ugh..

Learning to let go is important

The older I get, the more I understand that nothing is forever.

There are very few things that I know will stick around.

Where places are concerned, state parks pretty much stay the same since they're not places of commerce. Maybe a gate will be fixed/updated. Maybe some trees will be planted along with other beautification. Maybe a small shed or other small building will be constructed or removed. But as far as the park itself is concerned, that stays the same. As for any residential or commercial building, yeah there's no guarantee it will even be there next week.

For possessions, steel non-mechanical things stand the test of time. This could be any number of things like flatware, jewelry, all-steel tools, and so on. Anything plastic on the other hand is doomed from the start. That plastic, at some point, will degrade and break.

Wooden things can last, depending on type of wood and how it was constructed. For example, if cabinets were made from marine grade plywood (the best and heaviest kind), I am fairly certain they would last at least 50 years, with the only thing possibly breaking on them being the hinges and not the wood itself. Then again, industrial grade hinges would make future hinge problems a nonissue right quick.

The possessions I have that I hang on to are small in number, but are manageable. This is not to say I've not lost things, because I have. For what I do have, if there is any way I can get a duplicate, I get it if it's not crazy-expensive. This is why I bought a second 1989 Squier II Stratocaster guitar. I still have my first one, which is my first guitar, and it's the second one that gets played sometimes whenever I want an old-Strat fix. Also in my possession is something I was miraculously able to find a duplicate of on eBay, the exact same keychain I've had since my teens. I still have my original, but the dupe is what I use now just because I like it.

I have a few other things that are totally in the "only valuable to me" category, but again, small and manageable.

There is one thing I do concerning locations that allows me to save them in my own way. I get the GPS coordinates and keep them in a list. This is something I've been doing for years when I started realizing certain destinations can change drastically to the point of being unrecognizable, such as the Chinese place being burned to the ground.

Any time I'm driving and I come to a place where I think that I may visit it again, that gets saved in the Garmin right then and there. Later on, I copy the coordinates from the Garmin and put it into my list.

In my list are locations that aren't necessarily important to anyone else, but interesting to me. For example, I have the location of a former CompUSA saved that's now an EV dealership. I have the location of a former Sam Ash store that's now a Spirit Halloween. I also have the locations saved of places where I used to live, and for houses of where relatives used to live that have been gone for years.

There is one location I've been desperately trying to find for probably about 15 years now. The memory I have of it is very hazy. It was either a class trip or possibly a "kid's adventure" style thing my parents signed me up for before high school. About once a year I spend something like four to six hours going through Google Maps trying to find that location, and have never been able to find it. The only lead I have is from the hazy memory I have of the place. It was some kind of high point with a concrete or marble (or both) structure at the top, very tourist-friendly, with woods around it, with a very clear view of fields far below in the distance. If you think you know where this is, trust me, you don't. I have looked at photos of every mountaintop area in the region where I think it might be (somewhere in New England or possibly New York). I have looked at all the ski mountaintop areas too. I have looked at mountain areas that are now closed. I also expanded outside of mountaintop areas to anywhere with a high point. I even used AI to help try to locate the place. Every time, I end up empty-handed. But I've not given up hope. One day I will find it, AND IF I DO, oh yes, those coordinates will be saved, and you bet your ass I'm going to visit that place again.

I had a similar situation happen in Florida where I went to a very specific spot. At the time I actually did have GPS, and thought, "Yeah, I'd better save this...? Nah, I'll remember it."

I didn't remember it.

A few years later, I was scanning around with Google Maps, and whammo, FOUND IT. Oh, that made me a happy guy. Coordinates were saved, and I went there again. It was still awesome. That was the trigger moment that made me start saving coordinates in a list, and have been doing it ever since.

Now if I can just find that one frickin' spot in the northeast... ugh. Someday. I'm not letting go of that. I've let go of plenty of other things, but not that. The hunt is still on.

permalink (what?)