The Familiar Place

We’re on a plane again. Less than 48 hours after landing at Newark we’re heading home, westbound for LAX via Denver.

Friday Denver was in the 30s. Today 60s! I’m not sure there’s another major US city with more schizophrenic weather!

We went east to attend a wedding. It was spectacular, but I’m going to hold off writing about it until I can include some photos. I shot over 800. Even I’ll admit photography is an obsession.

I did have one unusual note on the trip. We drove from the airport to the hotel via the Pulaski Skyway. As we approached our turn just before the Holland Tunnel I had a feeling of familiarity, as if I’d been there before. It didn’t take long for the details to come back.

I was a kid–maybe four or five. We were driving back from the Catskills in horrible traffic. Just before the tunnel something broke. We pulled, or maybe were pushed, into a gas station.

I remember sitting there through the night watching the full moon travel across the summer sky.

I told my dad. He had no recollection. But I know the story is true. And even though things have been rebuilt or redesigned, there was enough sameness for me to immediately reconnect.

Why was this particular night so memorable? No clue. Maybe the feeling of my parents being powerless in my presence was traumatic at that age?

How strange seeing that spot brought it all back?

3 thoughts on “The Familiar Place”

  1. I think I have more deja vu moments, real or imagined, when on the road. I’m only surprised there was enough of the scenery that looked the same to you as it did all those years ago.

  2. One persons memory of an event is different from another’s version. I know when I remember a story of an event my son says no it didn’t happen that way. Who’s right? Me of course.

  3. I know exactly how you feel. When I go back to So CA and I drive by my old neighborhood in Los Angeles, I get flash backs from years ago. I still have a lot of old photos. It is fun to look at them after all these years.

    You certainly took a lot of pictures at the wedding. Just think if they were rolls of film. It would be close to 22 rolls you would have to develop. Now that digital cameras are the hot item, you can take 1000’s of pictures and get rid of the ones you don’t like without making a print of it.

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