Nothing ever changes; everything does December 2, 1985

  

We liked to think the old neighborhood never changes – that it goes on and on without end like some cosmic entity born of the big bang, whose life cycles are so invariably large that even small changes come only once in a lifetime.

But in fact, vast changes occur with each passing generation, even though they might not be noticed by those unfamiliar with the landscape.

The Lakeview Avenue section where I grew up has had so many small changes as to have altered the fabric of the place and made it impossible to recognize what it was when I grew up there.

The Sanitary Market on Crooks Avenue has become Bassingers, Charlie’s gas station on the corner has become some new brand far from the Mobil icon I remember let alone the sign above it with the flying horse.

I find myself clinging to old institutions such as the Catholic Church and school I attended, their brick facing as sturdy in my mind of an unmovable cliff. Yet even these have changed, the convent no longer a convent, the rectory no longer housing the priests – even though in both cases the buildings still exist.

Yet this environment altered even when I lived there. The school constructed just after my family moved into the neighborhood in 1946 with a church tucked under it where my mother married my father in 1950, and I went to school later.

I had first holy communion there. But by the time I had confirmation, the new church was finished.

The new church replaced on old army-style barracks that has served as the church prior to the constructing of the school and opened while I still attended the school so that the church in its basement became a gym, a meeting hall, a boy scout event place, a seniors bingo place.

During the early years of my schooling, many of these events took place in the assembly hall elsewhere in the school, which were converted to classrooms after the church moved.

 1985 Menu

 



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