Nostalgia

The last time Mark and I were here, we were kids on family vacations. There were no cell phones, no laptops, no WiFi, and no digital cameras. We travelled in the back seat of the family sedans and our blogging consisted of paper journals or notebooks. Our cameras were probably the 110 film variety.

As we began to leave the endless cornfields of the plains states and see hints of the wild land to come, I began to get an itch for a true vacation souvenir shop. When I was a kid it was Stuckeys. Cheese logs, imprinted shot glasses, and cedar wood boxes with a buffalo printed on top. And moccasins! Lacking a Stucky’s, we chose a promising looking gaudy gift shop called the Stagecoach shop. The billboards had promised authentic gift items, and hinted at all the wonders vacations past. Turqoise! Copper bracelets that turn your wrist green! And moccasins!

We pulled into the parking lot, noting that even though the Stagecoach shop was next to a donut shop and a dry cleaners, its parking lot was full of other middle agers looking for that nostalgic vacation fix. They did have turquoise jewelry, coonskin caps, wooden toy rifles, and imprinted shot glasses . . . but you had to search for them among the oriental trading company flotsam and worse . . . the extremely tacky adult joke shop items. There were indeed moccasins in the back . . . but they were the same brand as the sandals I bought at a shoe shop back home.

I’m sure that if we asked our parents, Stucky’s wasn’t all that we remember it to be. It was probably tacky, but more innocent. Our childhood visits took place near the end of the 60’s or the very early 70’s . . . realistically, the innocence was probably almost over even then.

As we drove back onto the highway after that stop, we began to see Antelope along the sides of the road. Rocky outcroppings began to appear and the mesas gave way to the rolling foothills with views of the snowy mountains. Not everything changes.