I spent the first eighteen years of my life in the small and unheard of town of Grafton, Massachusetts. It was my town, the only place I knew like the back of my hand. After I graduated from high school, my parents and I relocated to be closer to my Dad's workplace. Despite being an hour away from my hometown, I still visit it quite often to see my high school friends. Even though I have not lived in Grafton for over four years now, it still amazes me how every time I drive down there I am filled with so many vivid memories I could probably still navigate my way around town with my eyes closed. There's some things in particular that I miss the most.
1. My Childhood Home(s)
It is not usual to move around so often around one town, but my family and I managed to live in four different houses throughout our eighteen years spent in Grafton. That said, I never had one childhood home that was hard for me to part with, but each home marks a different time period in my life. There was our condo that my parents and brother moved into while my mother was expecting me. I don't remember the home well, I only see it through old home movies on VHS tapes of me and my brother dancing around the living room to Louis Armstrong. Then we moved into a newly built home just up the street, where my grandparents lived in a small apartment connecting upstairs and I befriended all the neighborhood kids as we anxiously awaited for the school bus every morning to take us to the elementary school. We then lived in two different houses after that, one at the end of a cul-de-sac with an above ground pool where I spent my summers. Then finally, I spent my last four years in Grafton in a townhouse just down the street from the high school. I still remember watching the house get smaller and smaller as we drove away behind moving trucks, feeling homesick for a town that I had grown to love.
2. The Center
Grafton was most known for its town center. It had small shops that sold antiques and penny candy, a few churches (I went to pre-school in the basement of one), and the library (I can still remember the smell of its old, dusty books and creaky wooden chairs). Most notably, Grafton is famous for its gazebo. It was our famous landmark, the sight where they filmed the 1935 film "Ah, Wilderness!" It was the place of weddings, prom pictures, and after-school hangouts. Season after season, families spent their afternoons in the park as their children and bands played on the Gazebo.
3. Swirls & Scoops
If you ever lived in Grafton and never tasted Swirls & Scoops ice cream - what are you doing?! This small, outdoor ice cream joint was just as popular as our gazebo, if not more. We spent summers munching on flurries or flavor burst cones (bubblegum, cherry, the mysterious yet tasty "blue goo") as we sat in the open trunks of our parents minivans. The store's off seasons were depressing, but once they put the countdown in the front windows, we all got excited no matter how old we are. It's the one place people always come back to, maybe I'll even take my kids there one day (one day very, VERY far in the future).
4. Superpark
Superpark was the place to hangout, it was the Monica's apartment of Grafton. I remember as a kid spending hours on the swing set, getting splinters from the wooden tunnels, and burns from the hot, metal slides (we were kids - we didn't mind). Sometimes, as teenagers my friends and I re-visited the park, giggling at the obscene Sharpie graffiti that we somehow missed when we were kids. Superpark was our place of nostalgia, and then the town tore it down. R.I.P Superpark, we'll never forget you.
5. Bradishes
Before going to Swirls & Scoops for dessert, no summer evening was complete without a hot dog or onion rings from Bradishes' food stand. Despite its crowded lines of families and soccer teams and seemingly thousands of mosquitos, Bradishes was a staple in the people of Grafton's diet. Summers in Grafton were always magical, mainly because of its food.
