There's something about giving new life to the dead and dying. Our town is rich in imagination and possibilities for the would-be forgotten structures of another era. In another life, the Ritz (above) was one of two movie theaters in this small Mississippi community. We could, literally, walk from our home on Main Street, pay our 25-cent admission, buy a box of Milk Duds at the counter, and halfway through "The Blob" find a moist chocolate puddle in our hands, squeezed to a sticky pulp during the scary parts of a movie that now seems silly.
Today the former theater is a beautifully restored facility that has new life as a conference center. A new generation is discovering it as a location for wedding receptions, proms, and civic meetings. The adjacent Ritz Cafe in an earlier time was the F.W. Woolworth, the place my brother once spent an entire $5 for Christmas gifts for the whole family. We all received a box of Luden's cherry cough drops, and he bought himself an airplane model. Who's seen an F.W. Woolworth in decades? Wedge salads and tomato basil soup have replaced it here.
Farther down the street a flower/gift shop is in the home of a former drugstore, a longtime institution in a once-thriving downtown community. The orignal owner's name is still carved in marble over the entrance, but today the space dispenses calla lilies and tablescapes. The police department has reclaimed a former television station; an appliance store houses the spirit of a long-forgotten department store; and a bank anchors the corner where fashionable ladies once bought fine clothing. On another corner, the Methodists have reinvented a former hotel as retirement apartments for the elderly.
I love seeing the morphing of places I knew in childhood into something vital and imaginative. I live in the same house I did as a child, but the town around me is completely new.
It makes me wonder if we can do the same with our "old" selves.
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