Anaheim Born and Razed

Small town memories stir each daylight savings. When darkness falls at five, I am again, Anaheim's child waiting anxiously for my turn to walk amidst cheering crowds down Center Street on Halloween. The Kiddie Parade! I remember the year I was a gypsy. I remember the year I was chosen to hold one end of the banner proudly displaying my school's name, St. Boniface.
You could taste the holiday spirit in the air. A carnival atmosphere in a city with a down town. Local shopkeeper festively decorated their windows with bright orange pumpkins and spooky goblins. Banks transformed into haunted houses and fully costumed tellers distributed candy to children making the rounds - marching between home grown businesses like Mitchell's Gift Store, Weisser's Sporting Goods, Hurst Jewelers, Jackson Drug's, Leo's Coffee Shop and the SQR Store.

I didn't know it at the time, but my childhood may have been among the last whose memories include the Kiddie Parade, the SQR Store and a down town Anaheim. You see, I'm Anaheim - born and raised. I made my debut on February 10th, 1959 in Anaheim Memorial Hospital at about nine o'clock at night. I grew up right over on Resh Place, beneath the steeple of St. Boniface Church. Harbor Boulevard to the east, Citron Street to the west, Wilhelmina to the north and St. Catherine's Military School boardering the south. I grew up going to Elvis Presley movies at the Fox Anaheim. Stopped at Center Drug first to buy a nickel's worth of candy to eat while sitting in the front row watching "Girl Crazy" and "Speedway."
Mother bought my saddle shoes from George in the shoe department at the SQR.

I'm fifty now and so are my classmates of '73 from St. Boniface School. A school that no longer exists. I left Anaheim to go to college, I got married and moved back home to raise my children in a city with no down town.

My kids never got to march down Center Street in the Kiddie Parade on Halloween. Robbed of that magic in the name of progress, my kids never had the chance to stand fascinated at the counter of the SQR as the sales slip was tucked into a tube and sent through exposed brass pipes up to the mezzanine. They never knew the little old lady with the thin red hair who cranked the elevator up to that mezzanine where she also wrapped the presents.Their memories do not include the pungent odor of shoe polish at Hoffman's nor the deer antlers that hung from its walls over the shoe-shine stands.
No. Those memories went out with the wrecking ball. As daylight savings descends - buried in the rubble - childhood dreams, a small town spirit, the Kiddie Parade and down town Anaheim.