Troy Remembers Bremerton

I felt a little pang reading this timely post on Troy's Work Table, a (sort of) local blog I am fond of. Is this the ghost of Olympia-future paying us a visit?

"When I wandered around Bremerton two weeks ago, the town in which I grew up, similar memories were stirred by landmarks present and absent. I was taken back to my childhood, my teenage years, my years as a young adult. I wandered by the storefront that once was Harbor Books—a favorite hangout of mine when my brother or sister were taking swimming lessons at the long-demolished YMCA. Thinking of Harbor Books brought a flood of wonderful book associations with the space: browsing and then buying H.P. Lovecraft tomes; picking up the latest Dungeons & Dragons and Traveller modules; looking through the maps and discount books in the loft; buying books by Stephen King, William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Ramsey Campbell, Clive Barker.

I passed the old Bremer's building, once the department store of downtown Bremerton, and Kitsap County. I passed the corner where Woolworth's with its soda fountain and lunch counter used to stand, now fenced in and claimed in a land grab by Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. I passed the places where the record store and tattoo parlor and the Roxy and Admiral theaters stood.

The dream of Bremerton-past shimmered and then faded. Sepia tone gave way to now: the steel frames of condominiums-under-construction on the waterfront, the new Kitsap Federal Credit Union building, the Kitsap Conference Center, the Bremerton Transportation Center, the Norm Dicks Government Building."