"Change, Change, Change... (Though I Would Prefer It 'For The Better')"

I understand the inevitability of change.  I have numerous pictures of me when I was younger.

‘Nuff said.

But recently – okay, this is going to be grumpy, but stay tuned.  Tomorrow:  The shinier “other side of the coin.”

Why don’t I simply write that?  Because there is also this too.  You don’t want the bubbly upbeat view of the world without its grumbling counterpart, do you?

You do?

Well then you are in the wrong place, because today, folks, it’s this.

(Credit, at least, for giving you a warning.)

Okay.

Over the past thirty-five or more years, there have been three reliable places we visit for tranquility and repose.  One is Hawaii, specifically a certain Hawaiian hotel we have stayed at since Anna was six months old and she is now almost thirty-six-and-a-half.  There is Rancho La Puerta, where in the late seventies, Dr. M told a inordinately freaked-out Early P. “You need ‘The Ranch’, and I went, and kept going because, as old-time rock ‘n roll does for Bob Seger, it invigoratingly soothes my soul.  And there is our tiny – make that cozy – log cabin in Indiana, the restorative “upside” of which, manana.

Now.

In the past less than a year, during our most recent visits to those three locales:

We were robbed in our room in the Hawaiian hotel.

So we are not going back there.

We were accused at the “Ranch” of smoking in our room when we do not smoke anywhere, I was refused access to practicing piano on the once available Steinway, and when we were invited to a “Select Dinner” where veterans of the “Ranch” were asked to suggest ideas for improvement, all our ideas for improvement were summarily dismissed.

Dimming our enthusiasm to return there.

Okay, so that is two former havens of rest we can no longer rely on.  (Without identifiable replacements.)

Now, a second time…

Michiana, Indiana, 

(A song awaiting a chirpy composer.)

The “crepe place”, its Gallic proprietor charming us annually with his Continental hauteur –

Gone.

Maxine’s, a faux French restaurant, a local landmark so old they may have built the city around it,

Gone.

And, horror of horrors – the typist’s hands trembling in acute anguish and despair –

Oink’s, serving the best and richest ice cream in the world, has “changed hands” and now doesn’t.

Both the flavor – incomparably creamy delicious – and the available “flavors”, discouraging shadows of their tastier selves.  “French Silk” (Dr. M’s invariable favorite) and “Coconut Almond Fudge” (my own) have both been 1984-like “disappeared.”  As in,

ME:  “I do not see ‘Coconut Almond Fudge.’”

NEW OINK’S EMPLOYEE:  “What’s that?”

The nearest alternative, “Eskimo Kisses” – coconut, fudge, but no almonds – tastes like fabricated regret.

So there you have it.  Three area “Standby’s” –

Gone with the wind.  (Although a counterfeit Oink’s shamelessly persists.)

What I am bewailing here, it’s not subjective, as in, “It’s not what happened; it’s you.” 

It’s not me.  Nobody likes being robbed in their room.  Nobody likes being told, “We value your ideas” and having those ideas rudely ignored.  That’s not just “change.”  Those things are definitely worse.  “Look on the bright side”?  What are the “bright sides” of burglary and disdain?

I do see a dichotomous difference in the third example.  (“Dichotomous” I think, possibly, is wrong.  I just like using the word.)

The “Michiana Deletions”?

“Nothing personal.”

That is just “change.”  (Of the sadly “subtracting” variety.)

For which I do not blame the place, and am therefore happily willing to return.

Inexorably drawn to a thing that won’t change, which I shall reveal in writing to you tomorrow.

Or, if I think of something urging immediate attention – or wish to build the suspense –

The next day.