Can you imagine how Rip Van Winkle felt after his long nap? I thought about Irving\u2019s protagonist today after visiting Red River with Bob and Craig.<\/p>\n
In the early \u201860s my dad bought a small grocery-store-ski-rental shop and a jeep touring company in Red River. Then, he sent Bob up to run the store and Craig to manage the jeeps (amazing in itself since Craig was just 18). Well, Bob, his wife Adrianna and Craig lived in the popular tourist village for nearly four years.<\/p>\n
And none had been back\u2014until today.<\/p>\n
Their reaction: \u201cIt wasn\u2019t the same Red River,\u201d said Craig. \u201cThere\u2019s too much glitz.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not the sleepy little tourist town where everyone knew everyone else,\u201d added Bob.<\/p>\n
And so I\u2019m wondering. Is it age that gives us that perspective? Do we old-timers always romanticize the past and mistrust the present?<\/p>\n
Or is the present truly not as good as it used to be?<\/p>\n
Can\u2019t say for sure, but I know one thing: If I\u2019m visiting Mayberry, I want Floyd to own the barber shop, Wally to own the filling-station (not a convenience store), Gomer to work there; Barney must be a deputy (with no more than one bullet in his revolver) and Andy simply has to be sheriff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Can you imagine how Rip Van Winkle felt after his long nap? I thought about Irving\u2019s protagonist today after visiting Red River with Bob and Craig. In the early \u201860s my dad bought a small grocery-store-ski-rental shop and a jeep touring company in Red River. Then, he sent Bob up to run the store and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1533"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1536,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533\/revisions\/1536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}