It is this time of the year, with spring in the air, the flowers coming up and the feeling of the cool but not cold temperture, that brings my mind a few places.
One of those places of memory is The Pines.
Every year when I was a child, for a period of time, my family would go to the Pines for the Guardian Lodge Mother's Day weekend celebration. I was going through my bookmarks and saw the Pines one marking this site ( as well as another ) so I decided to come by and see if anything new was going on.
The view from the Regency rooms, where you can see the conspicuous yellow color of the buildings wall remind me of finally getting into our room after my parents would register. My grandparents, my sister and I would wait in the lobby. How happy that place made me at that time.
It was good to explore then too. All the older rooms were never rented out it seemed. We would roam all over, the friends I had made ( through my Dad's association with the lodge ) and stay up late into the night . There was a rhythm and I specifically recall when all the people would go to the coffee shop downstairs after the evenings entertainment in the Persian Room.
I was there during the transition from pinball to video games. The main game room was downstairs and had a kind of dead feel to it, with the useless feeling of the ping-pong tables and that orange color of the walls! I remember when they placed the Space Invaders in the Lobby and during the show when we would be running around like crazy, the familiar bum-bum-bum-bum-bm-bm-bm-b weeeeoooooweeeooweeooo dunk sound effects from Space Invaders would fill the stillness of the lobby.
Even though these pictures are all about the decrepitude, they are still beautiful, if haunting.
I appreciate this site.
