TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE

My son wants to go car shopping.  The advantage to this is that he wants to go car shopping in Framingham, my old hometown.  I was born here, and this is where my first house still stands at the apex of Irene and Eisenhower Roads, just down the hill from the Garden in the Woods (where I was thrown out at age four for climbing a small tree).

We pass Shopper's World, which in its heyday was the be-all-end-all in luxury and convenience shopping.  It had stores and kids' rides and fountains that shot into the sky and changed colors.  But, like its twisted cousin Pleasure Island in Wakefield, it now only exists in people's memories.  Alas, Shopper's World is nothing more than a glorified strip mall now.

We also pass my sisters' school, causing me to randomly and rapidly turn into the parking lot by entering the "exit only" driveway.  The school, sadly, has changed very little in six decades (or whenever it was built), and, compared to the modern, flashy elementary school down the road, Hemenway School appears to be caught in a time warp.  I snap a couple of photos and continue down the road.

I have my son put the house address in as Irene Road, and the GPS brings us in the back way along the park, where I climbed the slide and panicked when shimmying over the high edge to go down the pole instead.  I remember that fear right now as I did when I was young and pulled the stunt, thinking I could be as daring as the cooler, older kids.  I was so wrong.  The slide is gone now, but the swing set is still there. 

The house itself was remodeled years ago.  I know this because I came by a couple of times when the same kiddo I'm with today played summer lacrosse at nearby Lincoln-Sudbury High School.  It's still strange to come by and see the backyard without its fence, without the swing set, and without the playhouse my father built for my sisters and me.

In the end, we don't buy the car my son went to see, but I get to drag him on a field trip down memory lane, and we do take a lovely ride through Sudbury and Wayland and Weston in our quest back to the highway.  Although I complain about fall hanging around too long, the mild temperature and the still-glorious foliage make for a pleasant ride and some new memories to cap the old.