This isn’t the type of morning where I have too few thoughts in my head. It is the type of morning where I have too many. Yesterday was a day of many parts. I drove up from Virginia Beach to Springfield, Virginia. That in and of itself wasn’t all that interesting. I stopped at Sheetz along the way and learned that they now no longer have jalapeno poppers which meant figuring out breakfast got that much harder. I also learned that gas is less expensive in Northern Virginia than Virginia Beach which is wild to me. That’s never happened before.
Once I arrived in Northern Virginia I called the hotel to see if I could go ahead and check in. They told me they had a room like the one I booked online available and they could give it to me. I arrived and they told me it would be 20 minutes. While I waited a signed a purchase agreement to sell my childhood beach home. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be, but a $1M property getting $3000 in rent and having all the insurance and taxes of a home right next to the ocean isn’t helping a business already struggling with cash flow. As a business decision it makes sense. As a personal decision it is tough.
After that I headed to Springfield Mall where I learned that the JCP was closing. The JCP where I bought my Boy Scout gear and school clothes and my mother picked up her catalog order and my father bought his underwear. My father who wouldn’t dress in any outerwear that didn’t come from Nordstrom’s bought his underwear at JCP. That store survived the first shutdown of Springfield Mall and Covid, but Springfield Mall is dying again. It is reverting to nothing but costume t-shirt shops, food court, and blank spaces. I eventually left and ended up driving to the Starbucks in Burke, because why not? And as I was leaving I passed a group of teenagers coming in and I had the thought that in 1998 I was them.
Then it was time for the actual reason I came up here, baseball. They say a bad day at the ballpark beats a good day anywhere else, and while they may be right I would have preferred to not watch the Nationals pitching staff blow a five run lead and then strand the bases loaded in the bottom of the 10th to lose a game they should have won at multiple points. There were several baffling decisions by the manager. The one I keep going back to is playing match-ups in the 7th by taking out his starting 1B for a player from the Australian baseball league because of handedness. It was obvious this spot in the line-up would come up again and it did three more times, all in crucial situations. There was also a distinct lack of effort and accountability from the players. It was a good day at the ballpark but a terrible game to watch.
After that I headed to another friend’s house to watch the end of night one of WrestleMania. I got there just in time for the main event and 30 minutes later they started the match. It was 15 minutes of Randy Orton walking to the ring, another five of Cody Rhodes, and then a bunch of pre-match shenanigans. It is always good to see friends and relive age old rituals. We go back again to the mid to late 90’s and I’ve been watching wrestling with that friend since Nitro parties and the WCW hotline were a thing.
Coming back to this area often feels more like a journey into the past than it does a weekend away. I am writing this in a hotel that used to be a prime rib joint my family ate at when I was a kid across the street from where the Toys R Us I shopped at was. Home is always home. This is a place filled with memories and they probably got all stirred up from deciding to sell a home that has been in our family since 1995, but if this area shows anything it is that legacies live on, even as they are reshaped by time.
David Huzzard Writes 