I've decided to make Thursdays my "Question of the Week" day because I always have questions and am always interested in people's answers.
This Week's Question:Has your hometown changed a lot since you were a kid?
For me, my town was constantly growing and changing because I grew up outside New York City and the town is a commuter's town for many people.
Although, hotels and apartment buildings started going up like crazy, it was one single thing that happened when I realized my hometown had changed even before I had a chance to move away.
As a small kid, my dad would take my sister and I to this little purple diner that was about 1 mile away from my house. I think the diner may have been 500 square feet, but it had this great counter with spinning stools and served the best hash browns that I have yet to duplicate.
The parking lot was always full and every other weekend YogaGirl and I spent a magical morning with my dad (the other weekends he took my brother to the diner). I wasn't a child of divorced parents, but my dad worked in NYC and spent a great deal of time on the train commuting. This was our time.
Breakfast, other than the hash browns, was a standard fare. It was the conversation, trivia questions and having a race with YogaGirl to figure out the tax on the bill what I remembered most about those trips. [Note: I don't think I ever beat YogaGirl at this game because she is 4 years older].
At some point, things changed. I thought it was because my sister didn't want to go to breakfast because she was getting older; or it was because my dad started playing golf on Saturdays. But, we stopped going.
The diner closed and remained vacant on the over sized lot for what seemed years and always hopeful that another person would revive the diner. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.
Instead, Vince McMahon demolished the building and put up a large office building of glass and the initials WWE at the very top of this building, the new home of the World Wrestling Entertainment corporation.
Forget the corporations that came to the town or the population growth, to me, my hometown changed when Vince McMahon squashed my favorite purple diner.
