Enjoyable Past Times

Do you ever feel as if Life is whizzing by at an incredible pace?? I feel that on a regular basis. I like the expression: "Stop the world; I want to get off!" I think that could be my mantra.

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I took a drive down "Memory Lane" the other day. We were on our way to visit friends, and I took a 'round about way to avoid a slow moving truck I'd been following. It's funny how you can drive past the same scenery day in and day out and not really take notice of it. It becomes a part of your mental photo album, I guess. And on this particular drive I found myself paging through it with my kids.

I was driving by my old "stomping grounds," past Daniel Boone High School (then a Jr.-Sr. High School) where I met the first teacher to really encourage me in writing and embarrassed myself in front of my "cute" geography/government teacher. I showed the kids where I used to have to "run" around the perimeter of the schoolgrounds when I was in Track & Field in 7th grade. (We usually walked it.)

We passed the Birdsboro IGA -- a small grocery store now named something else. I remembered shopping there with my mom and finding it funny (in a good way) how she seemed to know everyone there. It was like "old home week" when we shopped there. I bought a leash for my first pet bunny's there. And it's just up the road from Brown's Feed where I always bought my rabbit food and straw.

Then we passed Shed Road where as a family we did circles in the car on the ice on our way to church one snowy Sunday. That didn't impress my mom too much...or any of the rest of us, for that matter. We returned home and had "church" there. We zipped past Hopewell Furnace -- named Hopewell Village during my youth -- where we used to take all out-of-town guests because it was fun, educational, informative, and FREE.

When we drove down a stretch of Joanna Road (Rt. 82), I remembered how we tested out the turbo charge on our gold Mazda 626 hatchback. (It really did go 0 to 60 in 6 seconds (slow by today's standards, I guess).) And then we passed the swamp where a dead tree we called the Vulture Tree once stood. I can still picture those buzzards sitting there.

Funny how a few familiar sights can conjure up a world full of memories and stories to slow down Life...if only for a few minutes.