Look what they have done to my city.
I know what you mean. That city was good to my family, until it wasnt.
It was a great city, wasnt it? I, literally, grew up in Rainbow Park. Our back porch sat right on it. Incredible place to be a kid. Just acres and acres of places to play. (We were allowed to do that back then).
Of course, we had the beach a few steps away, two playgrounds, handball, tennis and two football fields that the city flooded every winter to give us two skating rinks.
Can you even imagine that today? The citys lawyers would have to be taken out on stretchers.
Dont tell the soccer moms and snowflakes, but we played on cast iron bars set in cement.
And, miraculously, lived to tell the story.
The city offered so much. The museums, the planetarium, the aquarium, you could never be bored.
Funny true story for anyone who recalls Kochs and Brentanos. It was a great bookstore chain. The MLK riots happened in 1968. My dad had to go downtown while things were still pretty feral. Remember, this was pre-cell phone, internet, IPod, DVDvery primitive times.
He heard a lot of smashing glass so he knew looters were heading his way. What did he do?
He ducked into the one store he knew they wouldnt hit: the bookstore.
He was right.
I always thought that was pretty clever.