>>7502373Finally I found my room, it seemed so normal at the time but I've since come to be intimately familiar with the fact that it was cavernous. So many of those things I've held on to for so long, even as they've grown broken or outmoded. The bits and pieces of childhood doodles and mementos still plaster my wall, joined with the doodles that came after, and I keep the rest in a box under my bed. My desk, my bookshelves, the old TV with nothing but a VCR I used almost exclusively to repeatedly watch the shower scene from Angelina Jolie's Tomb Raider movie on, I was 13 and still had so much hope for the future even as the future was beginning to crumble before my very eyes.
Life didn't get better for a very, very long time after I left that house. Even today, knowing what a shithole that whole area was (even that neighborhood, we lived 3 houses down from the mother of an infamous serial killer) that house will always represent home in my deepest psyche. When I dream of home, cobbled together as that place was I always end up there.
Took some time to look around town too, the old store and bar were good, familiar sights to see, but the old laundromat was something really special. Place was old fashioned, built in 1975 and run by the same dude for 40 years till he sold it, never had an online presence even in directories. Place was otherworldly, like a time capsule. Always looked clean, always open, even though it was in the middle of bumfuck small town USA. Never set foot in the place once in my life personally, but somehow I felt just as strong there as in my room. Nostalgia is a funny thing, especially when it comes to ephemera that really has no business existing anymore.
But if you grew up somewhere small, take a peek at google maps. I found a couple small spots that haven't been updated since December 2006. There's nothing closer to time travel than taking that step into street view, seeing a world that doesn't exist anymore. That will never exist again...
