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| Bessie became a strip mall. |
I decided to join the group from my own little corner of the world. It has been fun hearing about places I'd not thought about in years. Someone had a post the other day about a restaurant called Bessie Miller. Although I don't believe I ever ate there, I passed by every day on my way to school.
It turns out, Bessie Miller was quite the hot spot. Other FB members spoke of stepping on clam shells in the parking lot. The restaurant (according to a cookbook printed mid-last-century) resided in a 150-year-old farmhouse and was "famous for its clambakes and chicken dinners."
Doing a little more digging, I discovered the joint was in business for 42 years, from 1935 to 1977. As an interesting side note, in 1951, Bessie Miller's brother, Samuel "Gameboy" Miller, was issued a subpoena by the Senate Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce. (There was some talk that the restaurant was somehow implicated in shenanigans associated with the mobsters, although I couldn't find anything conclusive from the Congressional Record.)
But I digress...
Funny how you see something every day for years, then it isn't until much later, when you strain to recall where you've heard the name, that it all comes back to you. The mind is a wonderful thing, although I am finding the memory part more challenging as I age.
I guess that's what these FB pages have become, a sort of memory game for me. The Minnie Pearl Chicken place near our house. The stores at the mall that was demolished a few years ago. Uncle Bill's. Grant's. The old movie theatre where my mom would deposit my younger brother and me to get an afternoon of peace.
Someday, I imagine, I may be nostalgic for the things in my current neighborhood.
Will I care so very much at that point? Or is nostalgia largely a bi-product of one's youth?
In these days of isolation, I'm beginning to wonder if the local places I've come to enjoy and take for granted will still be around a year from now.
Time will tell.
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