Progress is fun when you are young but sad when you creep into older age. Personal rituals and memories of places become more ingrained - more important. Neighbor Tim sent me pictures a week or so ago of his visit to the Sandburg mall in G-Burg. It is closed now and presumably going to go into some sort of outdoor shopping area.
It's hard to even imagine these hallways being crowded at one time but they were. For twenty years it was the place to shop. When it was built the downtown was decimated. Now the downtown and the Other place across town have grown and the death of the Mall has been well known secret for many years.
My old car club, the Western Illinois Antique Auto Club, used to meet out here down the hall with the restrooms. My brothers and Dad made a tradition of Christmas shopping here and then having pizza at Pizza Hut. It was where I would bring little Michael out to play on the tractors when John Deer had an area. It was where Marj would send me in to places and I'd get whatever she needed.
It was where Brendan and I struck up a bargain with grades and I ended up with an ear pierced. It was where I'd take the kids o see the miniature train running around that great Plexiglas display. We'd almost always end up at the McDonalds.
Things change. Habits are broken and new ones created. Things spring to life, then die. An autopsy will probably report rents were too high - dictated from metropolitan places where account managers couldn't even find Galesburg on the map. That autopsy may also reveal that SM was indistinguishable from other malls and that a day trip to Peoria or the Quad Cities sounded like more fun. Maybe people simply change and grow fatigued with the sameness of it all. But for a long time, this structure, this edifice was more than bland walls and blander music. It was friends, and family and gifts and kids and maybe a little fun. How do you say thanks to a giant empty parking lot?
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