Category: ThrowbackThursday

This year we lost our local bowling alley, the Lanes at Sea Girt. The lanes had survived COVID, but not the need for another strip mall apparently. The lanes had been there for 61 years.

Just this month the last of the Circus Diner disappeared when the well-known clown sign came down. The sign will go into storage until the town can decide what to do with it.

Like the Lanes at Sea Girt, the Circus Drive-IN had been around for over 60 years. I had the pleasure of eating there several times. Loved their onion rings and people would go there for the soft-shelled crab sandwiches and lobster rolls.

What’s going up in place of the Circus Drive-In? No word yet as far as I know except that it’s being redeveloped despite attempts by many to keep the restaurant alive.

It’s sad seeing so much history disappear and be replaced by another strip mall, fast food joint, or bank. It’s not just that we’re losing a piece of the past, but the future as well. Do we really want to live in a sterile America defined by one strip mall after another?

How about you? Have you lost any interesting landmarks, restaurants, etc. that really bummed you out?

Every year we go into New York City to see the Christmas windows and other decorations, have a nice meal and watch the Nutcracker Ballet. We also drop by the NY Public Library on 42nd Street to check out whatever exhibit is happening. Several years back the exhibit was on 175 Years of Sharing various photos and the many ways we are seen via social media and surveillance. One of the things to do in the exhibit was a giant mirror where you could snap a selfie to share. Honestly, we couldn’t resist and here I am with my hubby and daughter!

Hubby and I were supposed to take a very special trip last year to celebrate my retirement from my full-time job, but unfortunately, the trip was canceled due to COVID. Fast forward to this August and the trip was canceled again. Sigh. With our days free to do something, we decided to visit one of our favorite places: Colonial Williamsburg. We drove down for a few days and had a lovely time basking in our Nation’s history! If you haven’t had a chance to visit, it’s definitely worth a trip. If you have, but haven’t been a while, there are a couple of new areas where they are doing archeological digs and quite a number of nice restaurants!

So for today’s Throwback Thursday, here are some photos from our visit. I’ve only done one historical romance (Snow Falling) but maybe I’ll do one in colonial times one day!

My grandfather was a saint. Patient, loving, kind, and hard-working. He was always supportive of my grandmother and mother, two very determined women. Plus, he would do anything he had to do help his family. In my February 2022 release The Family She Never Met there’s a scene where the heroine is speaking to her father about how to feed her family and keep a roof over their heads. During that scene you find out that her father had lied about his age in order to get a job to help the family.

That’s just one of my family’s true stories woven into the fictional tale in The Family She Never Met. My grandfather shaved a decade off his age so he could get a job and help out our family. My granddad was already retirement age when we came here, but he instead worked at one of the maintenance services at LaGuardia Airport. One of my childhood memories is of driving with my mom or dad to pick him up at work.

This picture is from an ID card for a medical clinic in Cuba.

As part of our downsizing, I scanned a lot of our family photos to save space in our new smaller home. I scanned this elementary school photo of me. I’m guessing I was about 11 or 12 maybe? We had moved to Levittown that summer and I started the fourth grade that year at Gardiners Avenue Elementary. It was a nice time, although I definitely felt like a fish out of water at first.

Since one of the storylines in South Beach Love is about two rival teens and their upcoming quinceañera parties, I decided to share a picture with you from my daughter’s quinces! It was such a fun time celebrating such a big moment in her life with all our family and friends. It was also important to keep that tradition alive and sharing it with others was a very special moment.

If you want to read more about quinces, you can visit https://people.howstuffworks.com/culture-traditions/cultural-traditions/10-fun-quinceanera-traditions.htm.