Parkwood Mall

I missed yesterday, I know, and it made me sad to put a big black X over the square.

Back in November, the owners of the Wilson Mall in my town announced that they would be closing and demolishing the inside portion to develop it into an open shopping center. Some stores and the theater will stay. The rest of it's going.

I have to admit, I kinda saw this coming. When they updated the mall in 2005, in hopes of attracting businesses, the mall had been on a steady decline for a few years. It was old, mostly empty, and pretty sketchy. People stopped going because the neighborhood isn't great.

But back in the day, it was our mall, and it was pretty cool.

My earliest memories include Santa Claus, the talking Rudolph, the only Chick-fil-A in town then, a pizza place, an arcade, and the Stride Rite, which had Yoshi in the window. I used to think that Parkwood Mall (the old name) was the coolest thing ever because it had a toy store.

In sixth grade, I once hung out with friends there, on a Sunday. We were allowed to walk around by ourselves. That was huge for me. The bookstore, B. Dalton, even had the really cool American Girl books. Sometime soon after that, we got a Bath and Body Works store. The sight of that red checkered awning was pretty awesome, because that was a store that went to bigger malls, not little Parkwood.

When I started reading the Jedi Apprentice book series in seventh grade, I'd always go to B. Dalton in the mall to get the newest one. Books-a-Million never had them. B. Dalton always did.

I bought accesosories at Claire's and eyeshadow at Bath and Body Works (remember the makeup in the silver containers? I loved that stuff.) I had my makeup done once, for fun, at the Clinique counter in Belk's. I even *gasp* used a tanning bed a few times. My first pair of glasses, and my first pair of contacts, came from the Sears in the mall.

An especially vivid memory is one of my birthday parties. A few of my friends had slept over the night before, and the next day, my mom dropped us off at Parkwood (so grownup, right?) to roam a little. We saw a limo parked outside the entrance, and asked the driver who was in it. He answered, with a smirk, Michael Jackson. We rushed inside to see if we could catch a glimpse of someone that famous in our little mall. Obviously, that didn't happen. It still makes me smile. By then, the mall was beginning to look a little worn. We went to one of those sketchy stores down near the arcade, and my friends tried on some trashy clothes (jeans with big cutouts and stuff. It was fun to laugh at.)

The theater held on for a good long while. That was the theater that had three rooms (one very skinny), an old lobby, and sticky floors that you never could quite see. My dad saw Star Wars there, and I'm pretty sure my parents' first date was there. I saw The Fellowship of the Ring, among many others, at Parkwood Theater, and in 2003, went to an R-rated movie for the first time, without an adult present. (The Matrix Revolutions, in case you're wondering.) They tore it down a few years later. I remember this particularly cloudy day, before the building was gone, where the marquee just said "Closed." I'd half-grown up in that theater, and though the one we have now is much newer and much nicer, I was a little sad to see it go. There's a McDonald's there now.

Though the worsening economy, the bad neighborhood (gang activity pushed many customers away), and nearness of Wilson to Raleigh (with its great shopping) probably made the closing of Parkwood Mall inevitable, it is bittersweet. I made memories there, ones that still make me smile, ones that make up my story and shape my life. As bad as the mall got, there at the end, it wasn't always that bad. I believe in this case, what used to be is a perfectly fine thing to reminisce about.

Oh My Word, Here I Go...

*ahem*

When I was fifteen, I started writing a book.

It was bad.

Here is an excerpt, with commentary included. It serves as a warning to younger me, since twentysomething me is currently DeLorean-less.

-----

Years ago, on a farm just outside of a town called Coleville, in West Virginia [not a real place. I stole the name from combining a movie with the wrong way my last name is spelled all the time and I had not at the time ever been to WV.] there lived a girl named Susan Miltons [I'm really bad at surnames]. The Miltons family was a relatively small family, with one boy, Johnny, and two girls, Susan and Linda [I swear I stole the names from an American Girl book.]. their father was a very hardworking man who was absolutely delighted to provide well for his family. And the family surely was well provided for. [What is this crap, young me? Really?]

Susan was a young girl with an adventurous spirit. She felt that she must have one, because Linda and Johnny were more content to do homework and see their friends. [Susan was apparently a loser with no friends. Or a serial killer. Criminal Minds would probably be all over that.] Susan loved to explore the thick, beautiful woods on the Miltonses [???] property. The trip was sometimes [only sometimes?] inconvenient, because Susan had to go around the field [corn, if you were wondering], but once she was finished with that obstacle [apparently Susan was fat, too], Susan explored to her content. [I guess young me wasn't into pronouns.]

To Susan, there was always some new place to find. Sometimes it had been an unfamiliar clearing. [How exciting.] Other times i had been a new path that wound through the woods, leading to some mysterious end that Susan never quite found. [Maybe that's where the bodies were hidden?] One unfortunate time, Susan had found the trail to the railroad tracks, and the train was just speeding through. [Dag.] But there was one consistent thing about Susan's explorations. She always took her loyal dog, Teddy, with her. And one day, Susan found another new clearing. But this clearing was very extraordinary, and more astonishing than anything Susan had ever seen.

It was a beautiful day one October, when Susan was twelve. [I think I legitimately thought people would get confused if I used "she" once, instead of the name.] The air was cold, the sky was the deepest blue, and it was Saturday, which allowed the whole day for fun. [No duhrr.] So she [freaking finally] went exploring, and Teddy followed loyally, as he did every time, his tongue hanging out, his fur blowing in the breeze. The leaves were changing, and falling, and not a cloud was in the sky. So the young girl and her dog strolled to the woods.

This day, Susan chose a new, smaller path than the others she had seen before. [My grammar sucked too, if you haven't noticed.] The path was clear, nearly perfect, not covered by thorns like most of the trails in these woods. Up ahead was a bend in the path, and when Susan and Teddy went around it, they found, instead of another path, a clearing. But this clearing was  different than others. [Those sentences are just gross.] Everything in it was a different shade of brilliant blue. The rocks were blue, as was the piney cover on the blue tinted soil. [Sorry, I forgot about the acid trip part of the story.]

"Oh," breathed Susan. "Teddy, it's so amazing." [Poor Teddy...I'm so sorry for what you had to put up with.] Teddy looked happy; no, ecstatic, as if he had found some hidden happiness in that clearing. [SUBTLE FORESHADOWING DUNDUNDUN.] A small fruit hung from one of the trees, and Susan looked at it, but decided against eating it. But she made a decision about the clearing itself. This was her special place. I'll come back every day, she thought. Or at least I'll try. So, after playing there for a long while with Teddy, Susan headed home.

****************
 [It gets better.]

Susan did indeed try to go back every day. Even when she explored other places, she found time to go to her special clearing. [Was anyone concerned at all about this child spending hours in the woods unsupervised?] It was a place of peace, somewhere to play and to dream. No other place was like it. But even so, special as it was to her, there was something even better about it that Susan herself would never discover [SUBTLETY.] So these happy years crawled by lazily, and Susan and Teddy became closer in a strange way as they visited the clearing. [I'm sorry, but just no.]

The day came when Susan turned sixteen. [This is apparently known to happen occasionally.] As this birthday had approached, she had stopped going as often. Other things, like friends, [finally], school [also finally] and cinema [Cinema? Really?] replaced the clearing as important to her. And then, Susan stopped going at all, and forgot all about this beautiful clearing. [Morality tale: avoid puberty at all costs, because you may be in danger of getting a life.] Teddy never did, though, and he went back every day, because, not only was he used to the routine, the dog [because I know you totally just forgot what species Teddy was] knew that something was more special about this blue place. [did no one care that the dog wandered off too?] But the clearing, as Susan stopped going, turned from a bright blue to a dull, dead, faded gray. [Being a teenager will also kill the local flora. Apparently.]

Susan graduated from high school two years later, went to college, and got married to a man named Charlie McKail. They moved far away from Coleville, to a larger town named Wilson, hours away from Coleville. [In North Carolina.] Susan and Charlie had a daughter, whom they named Anya Leona McKail. The family lived a nice life in Wilson. [Good to know.] Anya went to a good school [also good to know, because schools in NC err on the side of suckage] and Susan and Charlie had very good jobs. And all this time, the clearing grew grayer still. [I imagine it eventually just turned clear.] And Teddy, the loyal dog, died, as no one in our world lives forever. [Crap, that's depressing.] The years passed, with the clearing lying, forgotten, in the thick woods around Coleville.

[Here's a tiny excerpt from a bit down the page. Anya's parents are discussing moving to Coleville because Susan's parents decide to give her a house or some junk like that.]

"Mama, we can't move," Anya objected. "I have friends here. Do you know how long it took me to make friends? [In Susan's footsteps, I suppose.] What in the world's wrong with Wilson?"

-----

A lot Anya. There's a lot wrong with Wilson.

Fun With Felony Arrests

Fried Slice: Fun with Felony Arrests!

Since the election of a new sheriff in 2010, our local newspaper, the Wilson Times, has been listing felony arrests at least once a week. This includes names, pictures, and the offense for which an individual was arrested. It's always pretty interesting to read. Most of the offenses are for stuff like, obtaining property under false pretense, or possession of a substance. And yeah, it's never three or four pictures. There's a real crime problem in my hometown, and I'm grateful for the new sheriff taking care of it. He's doing a great job of cleaning up our little wretched hive of scum and villainy.*

But it's the pictures that always get me.

They're not particularly sad, or tragic. Usually one of two facial expressions appears.

First there's annoyance.

And understandably so. These individuals were hoping not to get caught, and they did. Innocent until proven guilty, of course, but basically, a simple concept.

Then there's the ones who have a mixture of embarrassment and shame.

 

Also understandable. Things might have moved too fast in life, and before they knew it, they're in deep water and they never meant to be. Oops, right? YOu've probably seen faces like that if your local paper does like ours.

But, as with anything, there's always the inexplicable third group. It's a fringe that I personally will never understand in any instance it occurs.

Once in a while, among the sullen faces in the felony arrests section, there's some clown with this face.

I really don't get this one. People with this face are apparently convinced that they are indeed getting their portrait done. There's no hint of sarcasm in their expressions. They're just thrilled to have been arrested. Just happy to be here, they say, 'cause life is gooooooood my friend.

Ah, the idyllic South. Nice, ain't it?






*Yep, went there. Don't judge.