Colonie Center

   The first store-contained Mall in the entire area.  It opened in 1966, and was THE place to go. I drove there frequently, when I was single, to shop and to meet my sister, and friends, and to go to the movie theater within.  I remember it as being a huge rectangle, two levels, with anchor stores on each end, One was Macy's and the other Sears.  If memory serves, Macy's entrance was on the lower, street-side, and the mall extended up a considerable incline, with a truck-parking area along the side of the mall, to the rear entrance, Sears, which opened onto a less developed area beyond its parking lot.
   I happened to be alone, Christmas shopping one cold evening, when I lost  track of time. When I went to leave, at the Sears where I had parked in  the upper parking lot, that exit was closed---the doors locked.  So I hurried down to Macy's and out that way. Now I had to find my way, in the dark, and through piled-up snow, all the way around the building, past the empty trucks lot, to the more deserted parking lot at the other end of the mall.  Having never explored the mall from the outside, I wasn't sure where I was going and even less sure what side I was parked on  (None of those futuristic cell phones available). Not a person was in sight and I know I felt frightened, scrambling around alone in the dark, until I at last located my car. Of course, crime then was not quite like it is now. But there was Lemuel Smith...
    What brings this to mind is I was at Colonie Center yesterday, the first time in a number of years. It looks the same, yet completely different, and I understand it is aged now and struggling to be relevant. I used to spend a lot of time there, alone, and  as a family:  for the events, the shopping, the arcade, the annual visits to Santa Claus, always with Nana, and hanging out waiting during the Valenty days on a weekly or more basis.
   Aside from attending the movie theater a few times in the last decade or so, I have not been there. And I won't drive there anymore, at least not by myself. One would not have expected that so promising a structure would become aged and irrelevant in so few years, relatively speaking.  But it happens.