March 30, 1970: Petti's Alpine Village Restaurant
"Today , we've got an
easter egg hunt for orphans
and then visits to the
State mental institute -
We're kept real busy!
30 hr. drive home - blah!
Love, Jane"
The Parking Lot of the Gods
Not far from the red blinking lights at the intersection, there's a little park with a small hill where, on sunny winter mornings after snow, the children love to go sledding. A thin line of ragged trees edges the park and frames the sledding hill, upraised branches silhouetted against the bright western sky. Never more than twenty yards wide, this feral meander of trees and tangled underbrush divides the park from the neighboring hospital, a lingering memory here of a wildness that's been swept from most other corners of the town. The low anonymous buildings of the hospital--physical therapy here, chest pain there--are surrounded by long wide aprons of crumbling grey parking lot. During business hours, the sun glints on plastic, glass, and steel, but later there's an emptiness that sweeps everything into an absent embrace. Pain becomes memory. The sky is silent, and trees move mute to unseen breezes. The fading asphalt is cracked and zig-zagged with ribbons of congealed t...
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