WonkaKid
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2009
I decided to drive down to DL once again this morning (since there isn’t much else to do ). But today I finally did something I’ve meant to do for years. Long story short, the first time I ever visited DL was sometime in the winter of 1999. I went on a Saturday with Evalina. a woman I knew from Chicago (I still lived there at the time, she’d moved to Pasadena about a year prior). We arrived in Anaheim around 9:00. I exited I5 and then took a left onto Ball - i.e. I was eastbound: the wrong direction. Pretty quickly we realized I’d taken a wrong turn so I turned down a residential street - Lemon Street - so that we could flip around. It then occurred to me to ask one of the residents for directions. But I made a point to ask someone who had an orange tree in their yard... so that we could also ask for a few oranges. I’m a Midwesterner and had never had an orange fresh off the tree. The person we spoke with was very helpful. When I asked if we could have an orange or two, he went into his garage and returned with a picking tool and a brown paper bag. He told us to take as many as we liked. So we did - perhaps twenty or so.
I’ve always remembered that experience and promised myself that one day I’d return to Lemon Street. I did so this morning. It was hard to connect that memory with what I saw today. I think that’s often how these things go. There was also a lot of magic in the air then because I was with a beautiful woman and was excited for my first ever visit to DL. Contrast that with this morning: it was gloomy, I was alone and I wasn’t really going anywhere. Oh well. That’s how it goes sometimes. You can revisit a location but can’t expect the emotional charge that it carried at the time to still be there. Sometimes circumstances have magic.
Side note: Evalina spoke eight languages at the time (I believe she’s at 12+ now). When we took an afternoon break on a bench near Matterhorn Bobsleds to share an apple, two German girls sat down next to us and began to talk. She turned to them and spoke in perfect German. The following day we were in Santa Monica and I thought I heard a guy speak Russian so I asked Evalina to say something to him. She did but a confused look crossed his face and he explained that he didn’t speak Russian but that he did speak Italian. So without the slightest effort, she slipped into Italian and they had a brief convensation. I was impressed and that has always stuck with me. I only speak a little Japanese and Swedish. I never became fluent in a second language. Let alone twelve ;-).
Anyway, here are some pics from today. Unlike last weekend, I didn’t walk the entire perimeter of the park. I simply walked by the front - Harbor to Katella and then back. The place felt even more vacant than last Sunday. One piece of good luck: I needed to use the bathroom and the Denny’s on Harbor was open for pickup orders only. They were very nice and allowed me to come inside and use their facilities. Had it not been for them, I would have had to wait until I got back to LA.
The tree from which I had my first ever freshly-picked orange.
Feels a bit like Chernobyl / При́пять
I’ve always remembered that experience and promised myself that one day I’d return to Lemon Street. I did so this morning. It was hard to connect that memory with what I saw today. I think that’s often how these things go. There was also a lot of magic in the air then because I was with a beautiful woman and was excited for my first ever visit to DL. Contrast that with this morning: it was gloomy, I was alone and I wasn’t really going anywhere. Oh well. That’s how it goes sometimes. You can revisit a location but can’t expect the emotional charge that it carried at the time to still be there. Sometimes circumstances have magic.
Side note: Evalina spoke eight languages at the time (I believe she’s at 12+ now). When we took an afternoon break on a bench near Matterhorn Bobsleds to share an apple, two German girls sat down next to us and began to talk. She turned to them and spoke in perfect German. The following day we were in Santa Monica and I thought I heard a guy speak Russian so I asked Evalina to say something to him. She did but a confused look crossed his face and he explained that he didn’t speak Russian but that he did speak Italian. So without the slightest effort, she slipped into Italian and they had a brief convensation. I was impressed and that has always stuck with me. I only speak a little Japanese and Swedish. I never became fluent in a second language. Let alone twelve ;-).
Anyway, here are some pics from today. Unlike last weekend, I didn’t walk the entire perimeter of the park. I simply walked by the front - Harbor to Katella and then back. The place felt even more vacant than last Sunday. One piece of good luck: I needed to use the bathroom and the Denny’s on Harbor was open for pickup orders only. They were very nice and allowed me to come inside and use their facilities. Had it not been for them, I would have had to wait until I got back to LA.
The tree from which I had my first ever freshly-picked orange.
Feels a bit like Chernobyl / При́пять
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