Stranger in my Own Strange Land

Whistling past my childhood

During the past week, a very close loved one was hospitalized with a nasty illness. The crisis seems past now, and for that I am supremely grateful. These scary moments do serve the purpose of placing things in the proper perspective. We realize all that we take for granted, and how quickly it might disappear.

There were two main ways to get to the hospital, which was located a good distance away, and was a place I’d fortunately never visited before. Both involved main roadways that were at the center of my childhood. I varied the commute, in order to soak in the memories. I hadn’t been in those areas for quite a while. As I drove, I marveled at the changes. Well, marveled isn’t the right word. Cringed? Gasped? Almost wept? Of course, every business that was there when I was a fat kid in America 1.0 was long gone. But the signs above the entrances, in unrecognizable languages, advertised not the natural passage of time, but some kind of foreign conquest. These were the spoils of a war that wasn’t fought. It was as if Annandale, and Falls Church, had been bombed by one of our imaginary enemies. There were few if any vestiges left to pine over. All that was missing were the white flags of surrender.

The 3 Chefs is long gone. So is the Fuddruckers that replaced it. I didn’t even pay attention to what’s there now. Probably something with a sign I couldn’t understand. I spent many a night on the weekends there, rolling in with my friends at three in the morning, after long and arduous partying. It was one of the few all night restaurants in northern Virginia. They featured kindly, little old lady waitresses who called you honey, and kept bringing you more homemade biscuits. My brother started out his undistinguished working career there, and was fired for dropping some plates. It was a foretelling of what was to come. There was the Annandale bakery, where we would usually go on Sundays after mass at St. Michael’s. I loved their jelly doughnuts, and their cocoanut cakes.

Where was Clark’s Music Store? Old man Clark was a legend in Annandale. He seemed ancient to me at the time. You had to speak very loudly for him to hear you. The dust on the books and music sheets were appropriate. My old friend Mark Costello worked there. Like so many of these old places, Mark is no longer here, swept from this mortal coil at far too young an age. Where is the Penguin Feather, which was Rainbow Tree before that, where I bought most of my records? They had pot paraphernalia upstairs, which was oddly legal to sell, even though the drug itself was not. As I tended to like underappreciated artists, I made out very well in the discounted, cutout section. You could usually smell marijuana in the air, just as you could at every rock concert I ever attended back in those days.

Not far from there was Annandale Bowling Alley. We spent pretty much every Saturday night there, up through the late 1980s. We were never great bowlers, but we had some great times. At midnight, they turned down the lights and if you got a strike with a red head pin, you won a free game. I hope the statue of limitations on it has run out, but I must confess to getting lots of free games when I hadn’t gotten a strike, or even had a red head pin. I blame it on the alcohol. And the southern rock, which would start blaring and inevitably result in some kind of fight, somewhere among the lanes. Sometimes the beer glasses would fly, and the cops would be called. We just minded our business. Well, except for falsely claiming free games, that is. Nowadays, the police would ignore the fights, and tase us for our petty crimes.

Down Columbia Pike a bit used to be Columbia Pizza, one of those old places, probably run by Greeks, that wasn’t a franchise, You weren’t getting the Papa John flavor at that place. That’s where I learned to love pizza. Across the street was the place that used to be Tops Drive-In when I was very young. I still remember my sister taking me there, and the female car hops waiting on you in your car, Happy Days style. Then it became a Ginos, and a Roy Rogers. It’s a Wendy’s now. I guess they have reserved that space for fast food establishments only. At any rate, at least the Wendy’s sign is in English. That can’t be said for the place that once was Rustler’s Steakhouse, where my late friend Joe Burton and I enjoyed so many meals forty plus years ago. We also sent many a steak back, just so we could get an extra baked potato. I guess maybe I was criminally inclined back then. I can’t interpret the sign there now.

Gone is the Spaghetti Mill, where they urged you to “tell all your friends you’ve been through the mill.” They had a huge scale there, where a slimmer, America 1.0 crowd wasn’t shy about weighing themselves. I doubt that would be a desirable feature at any restaurant now. The place would probably be sued for fat shaming. Maybe hate crime. At any rate, that was one of the places where Joe Burton and I “dined and dashed.” Ran out on the bill. I did that a bit too often. I guess it’s little wonder that I became such a Thought Criminal. Sport and Hobby is long gone, replaced by yet another foreign business. I got all my baseball stuff there. We took our Little League caps there, to have them stitch on the letter of our sponsor. I bought my Wilson baseball glove there. Strangely, I can’t remember what Big Leaguer signed it. Maybe Carl Yastrzemski? Baseball was a huge part of my childhood.

Next door to Sport and Hobby was Drug Fair, a now extinct place where I bought most of my baseball cards and comic books. You could actually buy something with pocket change then. A nickel for a pack of baseball cards, with a stick of Bazooka bubble gum included. Twelve cents for a comic book. I often went for the 80 page Giant comics, which were a real bargain for a quarter. Driving further down Columbia Pike, I passed the turn where my old fiancee lived. I unwisely became engaged at only twenty to a nurse a few years older. I would never have married her, but always had trouble breaking up with girls. I couldn’t stand to see the look on their face. Part of my bleeding heart personality, I suppose. At any rate, she shocked me by initiating the breakup. I was overjoyed. It felt strange to drive by that area, almost fifty years later.

The Annandale Theater is long gone, too, as is the Bradlick Theater. In those days, there were no multiplexes. Stand alone theaters were all you had. I can remember waiting in a long line outside the Bradlick Theater to see Mary Poppins. And A Hard Day’s Night. Not sure which memories belong to which lines, but both were very long. There was the Safeway, where my father took me to get the “big order” every Friday. I’d sometimes play in the schoolyard next to the store. I learned to swing there. Not a pedophile in sight. There was an A & P we sometimes shopped at as well, and less frequently, Grand Union. I can’t remember which store gave you yellow stamps, but you got green stamps at Grand Union. You could trade the stamps for prizes at another local store, but you had to accumulate a gazillion of them to get anything decent. If they still had stamps, I’d probably still not have enough to get that drum set.

Taking the Falls Church route, I passed by the spot that was once Cohen’s Toy Store. My father would sometimes take me there, to pick out just one toy. Mr. Cohen was a kindly, hands on proprieter, as was often the case in America 1.0. On the other side of Route 50 was the spot where the Jefferson Theater once stood. I saw a lot of movies there in the early to mid 1960s. Around the corner from it was High’s, where I would sometimes be treated to an ice cream cone afterwards. Seven Corners was the first mall in northern Virginia. Well, it was kind of a paltry mall, not like the ones that would come later. But it’s where I did all my Christmas shopping. And farther down Route 50 was Montgomery Ward, which was my favorite store for some reason. Ward’s, Sears, Woodward & Lothrop- they’re all gone now. Memories of a once prosperous nation, where retail actually paid a living wage.

You’re probably saying, what does all this have to do with conspiracies? Corruption? Cover ups? Well, nothing perhaps. But I have a huge nostalgia streak. I continue to embrace the past, and concentrate on only the good memories. I hate the finality of death. I hate goodbyes. When a business that I frequented closes, or in this case is figuratively conquered by our insane immigration policies, I mourn. I don’t adapt well to change. Walking around that hospital, in 2024, I felt like a time traveler. I worked in a hospital for many years. But that was a long time ago. The nurses still take just as long to come when you buzz for them, but they don’t look the same. Gone are the kinds of nurses I once asked out, and socialized with. Now they’re largely nonwhite, with varying accents. So are the doctors. So are all the supporting staff. That place looked just like Annandale and Falls Church. Conquered territory.

Maybe my parents felt the same way as they aged. Saw all the Mom and Pop stores turn into grocery store chains, and then were aghast at giant shopping malls. But at least they all had signs that you could read. You knew what the businesses were. Now, I’m not sure what half of these establishments offer. Korean barbecue seems to be popular. Lots of sushi places. The Annandale Bowling Alley had something with “Bolero” on a sign now, so I guess they’re catering to the new Hispanic clientele. Perhaps I’m just prejudiced. A bigot. The next generation of Archie Bunker. I’m sure it was difficult for the Gay Nineties crowd to adapt to the Roaring Twenties. And for the Roaring Twenties Crowd to to deal with the hippies and their counterculture. But at least they all spoke the same language. And they certainly never had to tolerate the transgender lunacy. This is an entirely different world.

To those conservatives who say, “I support immigration, but they have to come here legally,” consider that all those businesses, which radically transformed a largely White middle class area, were started by legal immigrants. We don’t need legal immigration any more than we need illegal immigration. If we don’t have enough people, why are the same societal forces encouraging young people, especially young White people, not to have children? Obviously, if you’ve driven in traffic recently in most parts of this country, you know that we have too many people. Considering the plummeting birth rates for American citizens, how many of these people sitting in traffic got here as a result of our diabolical immigration policies? Were all those businesses I saw, with signs in foreign languages, only necessary because American citizens wouldn’t have started businesses if they weren’t here?

As we prepare for the most important election in our history- well, that’s what they tell us, and they pretty much call every election the most important- consider the transformation that has occurred, in U.S. demographics alone, in such a short period of time. This was not accidental. It obviously involved planning, starting with the disastrous Immigration “Reform” Act of 1965. This has nothing to do with the immigrants themselves. I get along well with all people. Some of them have been exploited. Some of them were used to further the Great Replacement agenda. But their presence has contributed to a less cohesive society. No nonwhite country has ever attempted to import “diversity.” Our efforts at “cultural enrichment” have not resulted in better lives for American citizens. Or a higher standard of living.

So while I breathe a mammoth sigh of relief over not having to make that sojourn to the hospital any longer, I grieve over what I saw during the ride back and forth. I blanche at the women in full head gear, giving old Annandale and Falls Church the look of Istanbul or Afghanistan. There is no shared history in that, no shared culture. I love Chinese food, but why is every new grocery store now an H-Mart, catering to the Asian population? I’m to the point of shouting “get off my lawn,” but in America 2.0, the ones on my lawn would likely not understand what I was saying. We have lost the culture war that Pat Buchanan warned us about decades ago. The Sport and Hobbys and Spaghetti Mills are never coming back. Learn Spanish. Or Hindi. Because they’re not being encouraged to learn English. The frame of my childhood is still there, in the same place, just like the old America. But it’s been bombed out. By our own leaders.