Route 1

At the place where I began life, Mount Vernon Square Apartments, just below the name of the apartment complex is an ad for the ABC liquor store. I would say a premonition but the sign is new. Or at least, it’s younger than 42 years.

There’s an adult-video emporium down the block. Its windows are black from the outside but it is otherwise mundane.

The Multiplex Cinemas where I went on my first date is now a Costco.

In front of the apartments across the street is a banner: Come to church for a free catfish dinner, for those in need.

The area is finally asserting its diversity, after decades of Hillbilly Heaven and the Dixie Pig Bar-B-Q. The Baskin-Robbins where the preppy girls worked in high school is now a pastelería.

I can feel the old landmarks. The billboard that warned about the end of the world, a specific date. The date came and went. It was always a joke to us.

A place called the Thieves’ Market, antiques and old jewelry, a fortune-telling mannequin like in the movie “Big” — it burned down on Christmas morning two years ago.

My first job in a small brick house with shutters falling off the windows, like a woman with her eyelashes falling off the morning after. It was a property-management office.

The Denny’s where my friends and I were regulars in high school is now just grass.

The street where I turned to go to his house. I was too young to drive by two years; I rode home with him, unplanned, on his bus after school. My mom had to pick me up. She was grumpy about driving in unfamiliar places. She made a U-turn on his street, and as we passed his house we saw him scoop up another girl, our friend who had been with us, in his arms like a baby.

To Krispy Kreme now, to get donuts shaped like hearts for Valentine’s Day.

And eat them. Past Elsie’s Magic Skillet. Past the garden store with plastic palm trees year-round. And even on the highest hills you can’t see past squat three-story buildings and deciduous trees.