There's no free street parking down there anymore, and the abandoned red brick mills are luxury condos now. I took a chance, didn't pay the modern meter-box-thing, and walked the few blocks to the public market where I bought a pound of dark Costa Rican coffee beans roasted by a friend of mine. Then I walked into the bakery slash coffee shop and ordered a breakfast sandwich and their signature maple latte. An African man was in line in front of me trying to place his order and to understand the blasé questions asked by the tattooed and not-very-accomodating hipster girl at the register. He kept asking, "what?" And she kept repeating the same question in precisely the same manner - with exactly the same annoying tone, inflection, and word choices. The frustrated man, at the same time, was wrangling two developmentally disabled men whom he was charged with taking care of for the day. I ate the sandwich when it arrived and drank the sweet coffee treat, but the place felt all wrong to me - despite the dough being rolled and shaped and baked in front of me - and I left there as quickly as I could.
Then I browsed a bookstore and learned that today is Independent Bookstore Day and that Worcester has three of them within its boundaries now. I saw a boxed set of three vintage leather-bound volumes of Celine in French. I didn't look at the price tag. Upon leaving, I took to the sidewalk of Green Street and noticed that the block which was once the home of Sir Morgan's Cove (and later The Lucky Dog Saloon) was now just a cellar hole half-filled with loose bricks. I could feel that half-empty cavity reflected in the center of my chest and realized that much of what I think of as Old Worcester is gone now.
I remembered my grandfather and the places he took me - Capitol Toy, Ephraim's Books, Henry's Hobby Shop, Bancroft Castle, Berger's Army-Navy, Coes Pond, Green Hill Park, Remington Army-Navy. Most of those places are long gone now.
Drove to another one of the bookstores, not far from where my grandparents lived all their married lives until Alzheimer's came and took all they'd become in reverse order and sent them to live out there last years in nursing homes. This neighborhood was a haven for me then. This bookstore I'd never been in before. New in the last couple or three years. I came out half-an-hour later with six books I didn't really need feeling community-spirited and on the side of the underdog and of goodness.
To the auto parts store for five gallons of 5W-20 motor oil to try to slake the unquenchable thirst in my 400,000 mile Hyundai. Next door is the abandoned machine shop where my grandfather worked for more than 30 years and retired from. My grandmother was a bookkeeper at a chemical company not half a mile from here for more than 30 years too. They lived together all of their married lives in a small house less than a mile from here. They're buried together now less than a mile from here too, in the other direction. Such a small orbit. Their entire world within walking distance.
There are drowned shopping carts in the canal growing over now with moss. A trash floor in the empty lot. I remember walking these streets, much younger than I am now, and maybe even more dismal. I've lived my whole life in a place of echoes. A time, half now and half then. A place, half dream and half real. Nearly there but just out of reach.
To the Asian store for a variety of bottled teas and fruit-flavored yogurt drinks and then the purchase of a small flashlight from Harbor Freight next door. After the aimless shopping, a short nap in my car with the window down and the sky gone gray and sprinkling rain. Lastly, an early dinner at the Pho place where the young waitress, who is still hungover from a Thursday night outing but trying hard to tough it out, makes me laugh in sympathy remembering that kind of night in the place of echoes.
I took the thing out for a walk today just to see what it might show me. I hope to do more of that soon.
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