San Francisco Peak from Flagstaff Grocery Parking Lot. (Tomasito photo)
For some unknown reason Flagstaff figures fairly prominently in my life journey and I don't know why, but I can't seem to get far enough away.
I somehow always manage to return for a look-see every few years.
Many, many years ago I even studented myself in this northern Arizona town for a two dose period--long enough to get a "master's" degree in English. At the time I didn't see the joke of getting an advanced degree in English in this out-of-the-way place so very far from England.
Flagstaff was a lot smaller then and Northern Arizona University--which is now a pretty big deal--was then very small potatoes.
To make ends meet, I had a job as a night clerk at a motel out of town to the east. The motel was called The Crown and it was fairly new. Oddly enough it still exists but is very much changed as is the entire scene. The motel has a different name and they have added a restaurant (called the Crown Restaurant) and they have paved the parking lot--but the old cowboy-style Museum Club is still in business next door--still serving the town's drunks as it did in those long-ago days--though I suppose they are a new crop of drunks.
We found "Old Main"--the old main building of the university -- still standing.
I used to pick up my mail there and the NAU administrative offices were there as I suppose some still are--but the important new buildings of the university are now being built further and further away from what used to be the Flagstaff town center on old Route 66. In fact to reach the newest buildings is quite a hike for the few pedestrians who might still walk from town as we did.
If you are the grasping type--hoping to re-experience something good from the past--all it takes is a short trip to some well-remembered site which you have not visited for years-- to realize very clearly that nothing--but nothing--stays the same and that "this exists only because of that" as the Buddhists say.
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