I've Got This Photograph

One of my relatives mentioned Stratford Center what, for us, was the absolute center of town. Those people who lived up north, in Paradise Green, were just a bunch of Uptown People who weren’t really Stratford folks as far as I was concerned. (No offense to the PG people who might be reading this, but that was years ago.)

We had trains in the Center; we had a library, which I haunted; we later had the Connecticut Turnpike, which pretty much tore the Center apart.

There was Lovell’s Hardware store, older than the USA itself; some chemical company I can’t remember, but it did have a witch on a broomstick in the front window. Dobby’s Men’s Shop. Dahl’s Variety Store. The Post Office. Some building with a men’s club on the second floor. A florist with a parrot in a cage.

My relative said Dobby’s is now a tea room (and I saw it on some tv show); Lovell’s is one or two restaurants, possibly one of them Mexican. The post office is long gone and the turnpike took its place. I think the chemical company’s offices are a turnpike casualty, as well. I don’t know what happened to the florist and its parrot.

“Would you like to visit?” she asked. No, I replied, I want to keep it in my memory as it was. “I don’t blame you.” What good would it do to go back after all these years? I have no business there at this point and would just be looking at the ghosts of all the stores I knew and patronized. Let it be, let it be.