All eyes are on Hurricane Dorian right now. At the moment, it’s pretty much stalled out over the western Bahamas battering the islands as a Category 4/5 storm. Everybody on the east coast from Florida to North Carolina is waiting to see when Dorian will make the turn to the northwest.
The NHC’s three day forecast track for Dorian has been pretty accurate except for when it went between the Eastern Caribbean Islands and Puerto Rico. With this track record, I’m feeling pretty good about our preparations.
We had to say goodbye to Nala this afternoon. In a couple of weeks she would have been 4 months shy of her 15th birthday.
She seemed like she was doing pretty well for her age, and I was expecting to be able to celebrate her 15th birthday. Over the course of the day, she went from trotting around the yard to being in some significant discomfort. Bloodwork showed some unusual results that suggested something going on with the liver or pancreas. Given her age (just over 14.5 years…pretty respectable for a lab), I decided treating her problems would just be postponing the inevitable for a short time longer. It was a sad and difficult decision to make, but Nala gets to be with Simba and Mischief again.
14 years and 5 months ago she became my very first dog. Didn’t know much about dogs back then, but I learned quickly (so did she).
Nala was calm and mellow, loved meeting people (especially kids), always enjoyed the dog park and being outside. She was patient with all the fosters I had, and I like to think she had a bit of a calming effect on some of them. Walks and trips to the dog park were some of her favourite activities (eating being one of the others).
On the way to the dog park
Looking stylish in her Doggles
One of Nala’s most memorable moments was the time she crashed a neighbour’s party. We were just getting back home from a walk, and the family a couple houses down were having a birthday party for their triplets. Nala got super excited with all the people around, managed to slip out of her collar and ran right into their house. I also had Simba with me, and had my hands full keeping him under control with everybody around so I couldn’t run in after Nala. Not sure what kind of trouble she got into running around in the house, but the neighbours eventually corralled Nala and got her back outside where I got her collar back on. It was probably less than a minute or two that she was loose in their house, but it felt like forever. They were pretty good sports about the incident fortunately, and the triplets got to play with the dogs on a few other occasions under more controlled circumstances.
Nala and Simba playing with a stick
It’s been a rough 10 months around here pet-wise. First Mischief, then Simba, and now Nala. We miss them terribly, but now they get to be together again.
I love looking at old maps and seeing what areas used to look like and comparing them to modern maps to see how things have changed. The South Carolina collection has pretty good coverage of the Charleston area so I downloaded a few and went browsing around.
Here’s what the area just north of modern day Goose Creek looked like in 1919 (from the Summerville quadrangle map). Some of the roads in the 1919 map are still around, as is the rail line labeled Atlantic Coast.
Part of the Summerville quadrangle 1919 USGS topographical map between modern day Goose Creek and Moncks Corner.
Here’s is a screenshot from Google Maps of the same area. Visible just below and right of center is the Google Data Center. You can also see the outlines of the swampy areas on the 1919 map are prominently visible.
Google map area of the area between Goose Creek and Moncks Corner.
This week, I learned that the building Dad’s store was in has a name, and is quite old. A lot older than I ever imagined. Built in 1912, it’s called the Stovel Block, and has a longer history than you might think for such a plain looking brick building.
This is the building that Dad had his store in the 70s and early 80s. Fond memories of going there on weekends and "helping" at the counter. #YEG
A bit of family history. When us kids were growing up, Dad ran a little corner store with his uncle in downtown Edmonton. One half of the store was a breakfast/lunch counter, and the other side of the store was a grocery type store with canned goods, candy, magazines, a small meat/deli counter, that kind of thing. The back room had a small kitchen where food for the diner side was prepared and a small table we would sit at when we weren’t roaming the store or “helping” at the counter.
A lot of weekends, we’d ride the bus downtown with Mom to go to the store. It was always a neat place with people coming and going, and the stools at the diner counter were fun to sit and spin around on. I’d help out behind the counter on the grocery side getting things off the shelves that customers asked for.
The building has the creepiest basement ever. Long creaky stairway down into a dark, dusty, cobwebby basement with only one light and lots of dark corners. It's where the only bathroom was.
Dad’s uncle retired from the store, and Dad closed down the diner side and turned it into more grocery space. In the early 80s, Dad finally closed the store down. The area had changed quite a bit, developing more of a lower class atmosphere, and there just wasn’t a lot of business anymore. After the store closed, the space was filled with a succession of pawn and loan stores that just added to the less-than-reputable feel the area had developed.
Here's a good article about the building and its history. It also reminded me of the name of Dad's store, Economy Grocery.https://t.co/snomHABa2V
It’s nice to hear that the building has a history and may get a historical designation. Looking forward to see what it looks like after the renovation.
