Oh, God, my hometown is such a boring mess! Outside of the library and its computers, there is nothing to do while waiting for friends andfamily to get home from work. I'm reading a mystery, eating way too much fast food, and playing at the library.
When I was a kid, the downtown area was a great place to go: lots of stores, several five and dimes, a great drugstore with super fountain coca cola. Around 1964, the city commissioners, all assholes, had the idea of enclosing the downtown area to make a large mall. Well, as more and more business moved out toward the highway and several malls got built outside of town, the downtown area perished. By the time the mall was dissembled, there was no more commerce there. My hometown is now like a doughnut with a large empty hole where the commercial district was once.
So, now you drive down Central Avenue, and there are a few auto parts stores, a florist, a news store, maybe a tattoo parlor and a lot of empty storefronts, which the city commissioners have decorated as if they're still thriving. It's like they dragged a corpse out of a coffin, tarted it up and are pretending it's alive. Oy!
When I drove my brother's car back to my father's Wednesday night, I had to drive through downtown Middletown. It's like 'Salem's Lot: a few cars, a lot of abandoned buildings and no people. Very scary. And very sad. I may have to go out to a mall and buy some postcards to send.