By Mike Johnson
It’s good that I live a thousand miles from where I grew up.
It adds rarity and value to those special places rich in memory.
Because everything is experienced for the first time, childhood memories burn the brightest.
I mentally visit them often.
Distilled by miles and years, the bad is forgotten, leaving 100-proof good.
But memory only intoxicates you so much.
Every few years I get the itch to physically return.
It takes standing in the actual places, to awaken the senses, to activate their memory of experience.
You get the sight, the smell, the sound, the touch and the taste.
It’s an overwhelming bombardment of feeling that mixes the exact duplicates felt in the past, with the differences experienced right now.
By opening and closing your eyes, you effortlessly cross the decades back and forth.
It’s like an after-death life review while you’re still alive.
One such special place is the Lindstrom, Minnesota Dairy Queen.
On the way to grandma’s house, it was a regular stop.
Dad was tight with money so there were never any royal treats.
Just Dilly Bars.
In those days, they made them on-site, pouring the soft-serve flat on a pan, with the classic DQ swirl on top, which became the side of the treat, once sticked and dipped in chocolate.
Today, they’re made by machinery off-site and the swirl is gone.
Since the 1960’s, the walk-up DQ I experienced in Lindstrom has been replaced by a larger building with inside seating.
Things change.
The melancholy is thick.
But it’s the same piece of land.
My heart skips a beat when it comes into sight.
I always stop.
I have to.
I don’t travel the thousand miles often enough to cavalierly drive by.
It’s not the same place, but it is.
I’m not the same person, but I am.
We’ve both changed.
We both share the past, we both share the present.
Lots has happened in the middle.
One of the last photos ever taken of Robin Williams occurred at my Lindstrom Dairy Queen.
A few weeks before his 2014 death, Williams was at a nearby treatment center getting a check-up.
At 9:30 on a Sunday night, he drove to the Lindstrom Dairy Queen, parked in the lot, and entered the store for a small vanilla cone.
15-year-old Abby Albers was on duty.
She recognized him but it made no sense that he should be in her tiny town, in her Dairy Queen, speaking to her, at this time of night.
But once she heard his voice, she knew.
He graciously posed for a photo with Abby.
It’s a haunting picture, with a subdued expression, hinting of an inner struggle.
But at that moment, no one knew.
That photo went worldwide.
It’s odd and a bit disconcerting when national attention focuses on one of your sweet special places.
Another thick layer of story and experience arrived that didn’t need your presence.
You realize there must be countless others who see your cherished place as their special place too.
It’s still special to you.
It still provides that bombardment of memory and feeling.
You're glad it does the same for so many others.
But the swirl is gone.
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More:
An Authorized View of That Robin Williams DQ Photo
It Wasn't Depression or Addiction, It Was an Invasive Brain Disease
Why I'm Magnetized to This Railing
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