When I was in high school, back in the mid-second half of the last century, we band kids used to hang out sometimes at the Carrows restaurant here in town. We used to raise a little hell. I remember one time we got kicked out, in perpetuity, for having a food fight with the squeeze bottles of bbq sauce. Curtis M, who played the sousaphone, could hit the ceiling.

Before that, going back into the 1960s, I remember the place as Loops, and going there with my folks. I vaguely remember the canned big band tunes that drifted down from the ceiling. Redish brown vinyl booths.

That place is closed down now, and the rumor was they were going to turn it into a Denny’s. I drove past it today, empty and dark. There’s a big sign facing the freeway, indicating 1.14 acres for sale.

I wish I could think of something poignant and sentimental about this, something about the lost and irretrievable benchmarks of youth, blah blah. But what the hey. Nothing lasts forever, it wasn’t the place I remember anymore, and I don’t really care for Denny’s either.