Today was interesting for me as I tried to get away for the day with the kids. I originally thought it would be a great idea to take a walk down memory lane and go to some of those places I used to hang out when I was a teenager, and show my oldest daughter that there was a time when her daddy was cool. My brilliant idea was predicated on the ideal that I would take her and the other two twits to Salisbury Beach which was one of the coolest places on earth when I first got my driver’s license and carried on being that until I was well past college.
Salisbury was just down the road from Hampton and the place offered a lot of cool things for any young male that was casually trying to pick up girls. There were 4 large arcades, an amusement park, food vendors everywhere, fortune tellers, a concert hall, batting cages, go carts, bumper boats, you name it. My memory of the place has always been fond as I look back on all of the wonderful memories in between being turned down by all the girls I had gone there to pick up in the first place. I figured that the kids would love the rides and games and other things that the place had to offer. We could then go to a few of the stores that sold souvenir junk and buy some cheap trinkets that would forever immortalize the wonderful day that we had.
Well as usual the best laid plans really fell short when we finally got there. I really had all of the warning in the world as we took the long winding road down 1A and many of the things that I had remembered were boarded up. The kids were ruthless in their assessment that “absolutely nothing cool” was coming up around any of the corners. The Funland that me and my loser friends would end our night at, getting rid of the last of our quarters clinking around in our pockets was a hole in the ground, with a pile of old rotting structures that used to be a mini gold course along side of it. I had assured the kids that when we got to the beach it would be a wonderfully fun place and to put it lightly I had nothing but shock when I saw the boardwalk that used to be Salisbury Beach.
There was still one arcade left anyway. It was pillared by all the Hispanics blaring loud barrio music and starting fights with each other. The place where the carnival rides used to be was nothing more than trash and caved in gates. I couldn’t even tell that there used to be rides and games there. All of the batting cages were just an empty lot, and it wasn’t even converted into a parking lot. What was the point, because all of the empty parking lots around it were nothing more than places for gangster types to do “burn out contests” and assorted other criminal activities. The sad part was that it was the most entertainment in the region now, but dreadfully not the type of entertainment that I wanted to take the kids to. The place was a total ghost town filled with nothing but lowest common denominator, and I hate to admit that because it sounds so elitist.
I imagine that it is a good time to point out that not every building there was caving in, or looking like it would the second you walked into it. There was one building at the corner that was the falling in building 20 years ago, and now it looks like a palace while the rest of the place is run down, boarded up, or completely blanketed by scary looking people. I remember when they were zoning it, and I have to admit that it oddly fascinates me how it thrives and the rest of the community totally closed up. I’m also afraid to bring it up, as it always brings people out of the rafters to defend it as well. The place known as “Tens” looks like a Mediterranean castle amidst the wreckage of land occupied by Serfs.
“Tens” is the strip club {gentlemen’s club sorry I got the memo} that was being erected out there about 15 years ago amidst much public speculation. The people that were being torn apart in the print media around here were up in arms because they felt that the club would destroy the area, and make it unsuitable as a family beach. At that time in my life I happened to be one of the people that agreed with the print media that it was a bunch of people who needed to get with the 90’s and broaden their beliefs and ideals. As I look at that ghost town that is obviously riddled with crime, I think that I was an idiot. I’m sure there are plenty of people that will say I haven’t changed, but that is usually their problem and not mine.
What I want to know is where the stories of, “Oops we were wrong” ever are? It’s the main reason that I happen to be a conservative. I am not a prude that needs to censor things. Heaven knows that I have written more pornography and outlandish behavioral issues throughout my blogs over the years to even try to fool anyone into thinking that. What I am though is a realist, and sometimes it is better to buck the beliefs of the “enlightened” then to suffer the consequences of what they get through. Those wonderful commercials for Foxwoods that just about everyone in the country has to endure should be a grand example of that one. The people who were against that were torched and called every name in the book and now there is a huge casino out in the middle of Connecticut with absolutely nothing else within miles of it, if you don’t count all of the caved in buildings. You’ll never see a single “Oops” story written about that, and there are hundreds of families just in the area that were destroyed by having a casino on their street.
Salisbury Massachusetts appears to be lost to the cause. I am fine with that for now because I can take my kids to York and have fun with them, but it’s another one of those forgotten towns that won’t be viable for another hundred years because people don’t want other people’s morality imposed on them. Las Vegas goes through this every fifty years or so, or at least so it says it does. I mean you can take your family there now and they can have a reasonably wholesome time, which is a far step from what it was 20 years ago. I mean as long as you stay on the strip. The murder rate is still much higher, and if you get off the iron path that the police set up, you probably will end up dead. Tourist murder is still higher there than anywhere else on earth, but they keep a wonderful lid on it. Don’t wait for an apology letter on it though, because it will come out right after the one that apologizes for the “known fact” that there would be a draft in 05. When those with power are wrong they are wicked wrong, but when they are right you will know about it in spades. Unlike when they are wrong, because those that know they are wrong will always be labeled as “wronger” ;8o)
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Nothing that was printed here was intended to offend anyone, and if it did, screw ya, you begged for it. If you believe that there are some measures that can be taken to change me, then please feel free to pray for me, and while you are at it yourself, because you read this far, and if you hated every minute of it, then you are an idiot, not me, or the other people who like what I have to say! .. Jeremy
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