Looking for some distraction on a winter day, a friend and I went to the popular and historic shopping district in our town. I’ve lived here long enough—more than 50 years—that I remember these streets when they were a plain commercial district, with ugly 1950s storefronts. But it’s not the same.

Over the years, I’ve seen lots of changes, of course. Back in the old days, Pearl Street had only a few restaurants. One of my favorites served mainly hamburgers and mac and cheese, and the owner entertained customers with folk songs (sung badly but with heart). Now there’s at least 50 restaurants offering everything from sushi to tapas to vegan selections. Instead of a lone folk singer, TVs noisily broadcast sports games. And, of course, there’s a café on every block. In my youth, coffee shops were called bakeries, where you would get a cinnamon roll, and your choice of coffee was black or with cream, none of this fancy latte and chai stuff.

Of course, lattes are a welcome improvement, and yet, as I’ve gotten older, and most of the world younger, I’ve felt increasingly like a stranger in my town where I’ve lived since the 1970s when I was a student at the university.  But now it’s mostly young people, a different generation, who cruise the mall in stores that are unfamiliar.

On that day, we stopped at a small coffee shop that was mysteriously also selling kitchen and bedroom items, so we enjoyed our drinks sitting among pillows and plates. In a gift store, I was struck by a poster of an “antique” map of the USSR, especially because I was in school when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was still a nation to be feared. Now I’m the antique being crushed by younger people moving so fast that I can’t get out of their way without being pushed into the table of candle holders. In a clothing store, I couldn’t differentiate between the sections for male and female clothes—mostly athletic–and I’ve learned not to ask so I don’t show my ignorance or age.

And yet some of the stores were oddly familiar. The poster store had reproductions of music posters from the 1960s and ‘70s—what we would have called psychedelic posters with crazy colors and jagged lines. It’s almost disorienting, as if I had gone back in time. I studied the one of Janis Joplin; were younger people familiar with this legendary singer, or were older people buying this to cement their own youth? I had a quick thought to tell the manager I had seen Joplin sing in San Francisco at Golden Gate Park in the ‘70s. Why did I feel a need to stake my claim in this world where I don’t belong anymore? 

In the last few years, vinyl records have become popular again, and at the store downtown, young people were thumbing through albums just like we used to do, when we were excited to find the latest Beatles or Bob Dylan. Maybe if you live long enough, everything comes around again, like bell-bottom pants and long hair.

Downtown my friend and I ate at a restaurant that mimicked one from the 1950s, where the tables, booths and chairs are plastic in colors of turquoise and orange, with the star-shaped patterns I remember from my youth.  I guess you don’t have to miss your youth if it’s coming back to you, resurrected by a younger generation that perhaps longs for the more stable life we elders had so long ago. The world has gotten confusing—new mixing with old. And this renewal feels disorienting, as if I’m in a TV show where life is simpler, happier and father always knows best.

But I don’t want this fake world. I want my town and youth back, where, after we finished our shift, my coworkers and I would retreat to our favorite hamburger joint. I know you can’t go home again, not the least of reasons that Tom’s Tavern has since been replaced by an upscale restaurant that serves “wood roasted octopus, with curried carrot purée, candied bacon, roasted turnips, asparagus, black garlic aioli.” Since Tom’s closed I’ve become mostly a vegetarian, but if the tavern were magically resurrected, I’d beat a path to their door to enjoy their hamburgers and fries, while sitting in a booth and watching the shuffleboard players. Just for a while, it would feel like home.