I drove through Hickory Hollow today.
It was a beautiful spring day.
I had nowhere to be after a rough week.
The kind that had me longing for a slow, scenic drive.
Maybe you don’t know Hickory Hollow.
Maybe you didn’t grow up with it in the 90s.
That’s okay.
We all have our own version of Hickory Hollow
A place that reminds us of simpler times.
It used to be a vibrant lively oasis.
Sports bars, billiards halls, a quintessential 90s mall.
A pizza joint my parents took me to every Friday night.
I’d order a plate of olives and call them tires.
Even then, I felt the sweet release of a Friday evening.
A week of school gone by, and the promise of a weekend with endless possibilities.
We’d stop at Toys R Us some weeks, and I’d get a new toy.
If nothing else, I’d stay up late on Fridays.
KB Toys, Suncoast, Waldenbooks.
Treasures of yesteryear.
I got older…a teenager…and Hickory Hollow became the place to congregate.
See a movie. Eat at Applebee’s. Fond memories.
The sounds of traffic.
Stopping and going.
Remind me of the pulse this place once had.
Like everything, it’s grown old with time.
Our favorite places closed, one by one throughout the years.
Dilapidated and run down.
There’s little left to stir those memories within me.
But, I can still feel the carefree nature of childhood pass through my hair with the breeze.
I want to hold onto that.
I want to cherish it.
I want to relive it.
Because life is full of pressure 25 years later.
And, that reminds me.
When we’re young, we yearn for our freedom.
But, once we get it, we realize we had what we truly wanted all those years ago.
Pizza and action figures on a Friday night.
The pain in nostalgia is in the remembrance
That we may never have that warm, comforting feeling again.
At least not in the same fashion.
The free spirit, our whole lives ahead of us.
What Hickory Hollow was exists only in my memory.
I’ll do my best to keep it.
And on days when life is overwhelming,
I may have to get in the car and go for a drive.
