My hometown

I don't have many pictures of elementary school, but this year was special because I reunited with some of my friends that I had not seen since eighth grade.  Some memories were stirred up.  Everyday after school included a walk to town, where I would cross the foot bridge, walk the indian trails, swing on a swing, buy a candy bar and walk home.  Also, like I said there was not much social time on weekends. I did go to girl scout meetings.  Also, one of the funny things I remembered was there was a group of girls and the two girls next to me were included.  We formed a club and it was  called the club.  We had a president, vice-president, secretary and treasurer.  It consisted of about ten members.  It was a bit exclusive, which is funny because that is what I hated most about elementary school was feeling like an outsider.  We would have dues and figure out one fun thing to do a month.  We would vote on it and then figure out how we would get rides to things such as bowling, roller skating and I think we even went horse back riding.  Each month it was at a different member's house and they would be in charge of refreshments.   In the neighborhood we would put on plays on porches or have pretend wedding ceremonies picking flowers for our bouquets.  Later we would play with the boys such games as dodge ball, last one,  we would climb trees, and even take one of our neighbors row boats out on the lake and fish.  During the summer there was a movie theatre right down the street we could walk to.  Many times I would also walk to the boardwalk and sit on the rail and listen to a string band.  During this time there were  three grand hotels.  I loved to just watch when the hotel guests would be done their dinners and stroll the boardwalk with their formal attire including long dresses for the women and tuxes for the men.  One of the grandest hotels was torn down when I was about twelve and that was sad.  It was really the beginning of  a sad time.  The grand days of Spring Lake were over and it was the residents of the town that wanted it that way.  Something I will never understand.  The zoning for the town is when an hotel is torn down or burns down (which was happening a lot also) only single residential houses could be re built on the space.  This meant less business for the area stores, ice cream parlors and that movie theatre didn't last too much longer after that either.