Gone, Baby, Gone

For some reason, I was looking at an arial view of Stillwater, Oklahoma today. I zoomed in to look at the little area where I lived for about a year during college and to my horror, it was gone. Just gone. We called it ‘The Cove’ because the area where we parked our cars was surrounded by a couple of little old houses, two small apartment buildings and trees in a circular pattern. It was located just South of the OSU campus, between Hester and Ramsey streets behind a house and it had a secluded, homey feel to it. The residents of The Cove would often sit outside together on warm nights and drink beer. Everyone was friendly and helped each other out. I lived in a dilapidated house in The Cove during the summer of 1986, or more precisely, I lived in the attic, which had been turned into a tiny apartment accessible by rickety stairs that led up the side of the house. The rent was $99 a month and it had a window unit air conditioner that often made it too cold. I had a little striped kitten named Spike. A guy named Rob lived in the main part of the house and there was a small basement that was dark and scary. It had old mason jars of food in it and my friend Janet and I used to dare each other to go inside. I lived in the attic There were two apartment buildings with four cute little apartments each in The Cove. My friend, Janet lived in one and I could see her front door from my tiny kitchen window. I delivered pizza for a living that summer, working the night shift mostly, from about 5:00 PM until 2:00 AM. I drove a bright orange Jeep that matched my bright orange dyed hair. I was an art student and dated a musician, who kept the same strange, vampire-like hours as I did. My Jeep This is the only pic I can find right now of the big orange hair. Of course, that's me in the middle As I looked around on the map, I saw that several places I remembered were gone. The Scholar’s Inn, an apartment complex right across from the basketball stadium is now a parking lot. My friend, Gary lived there and had great parties in the courtyard. He and I also used to play pool at Eskimo Joe’s, back when Joe’s was a real bar and not the Chili’s-like establishment of today. I was happy to see that The Stonewall Tavern still looks intact and if you walk South from there, there was this great used bookstore and a barber shop called 'Whisperin' Richard's'. Whisperin' Richard could only speak in a whisper, due to some sort of vocal chord injury. I wonder if he's still there. The OSU Sculpture Lab building is gone. A sculpture of mine graced the floor in the lab for probably a very long time. My ill fated mold broke while pouring a cement sculpture and it turned into a big blob and hardened on the floor. Other favorite places were Bill's Italian Restaurant, Leo's Peking Palace and Hideaway Pizza. I know that Hideaway is still there. My musician boyfriend worked at Bill's Italian Restaurant and we used to climb up on top of the building at night to catch a breeze. Looks like I need to go back to Stillwater soon and look around. I know that things have changed a lot since I lived there. I expect them to. I guess that the places I knew only live now in my mind and in my photos. All that's left today of 'The Cove'. It may not have been paradise, but they paved it and put up a parking lot.