I'm sitting here in the McDonald's parking lot on Wise Avenue. For the most part Dundalk still feels like the same town I grew up in. But it's not, not really. You can't go home again, so they say. Most of my family and friends have left. So have many stores. The Pizza Hut was razed where I used to play the cocktail arcade game; there was this huge, round fireplace in the center of the restaurant. The Dennys had been here for over 40 years; it's boarded up now and has been since the pandemic, all set to become another car cleaner. I moved out about 10 years ago to get a new house with my girlfriend, though I argued to stay. My parents left over 5 years ago, and my aunt and uncle left years before. And now we've lost our bridge.
I'm not ready to go inside yet. It's nice out, anyway. But I need to make sure I'm cool before I head in. All I want to do is air-punch! I want to let it out, whatever it is. I want to shake this feeling that holds me like a wet blanket. This feeling is nostalgia. I've been talking about that feeling for a good while now. I cannot return to the past save for the moments inside my mind. That's just the only place I want to be. The past may as well be a city nuked during Armageddon...because I am stuck here in shitworld like everyone else.
This new McDonald's is as ugly as anything ever dreamed up in architecture. And that goes for the inside, as well. The previous McDonald's here was once that beautiful late-'60s design with its cedar-shingles and mansard roof. Honest-to-God brick and glass perfection sat here for decades; a Playplace was added in the early '90s with Nintendo 64 systems. Compared to the square abomination that sits here before me today the previous incarnation was equal to anything Frank Lloyd Wright had ever envisioned...
I have a lot of memories from this once and future McDonald's, but in 1986, in particular, my mom brought me and my sister here for a Happy Meal dinner. Specifically, October 1986, and we were here solely for the pumpkin pails.
We would end up with all 3: McBoo, McGoblin and McPunk'n. For my sister this was a dinner at McDonald's like any other. But for me the Halloween pails were something special forever. I still remember seeing the translite on the backlit menu board above the counter, the pails on the counter, and the gift certificates on the counter.
Across Wise Avenue was a police precinct. The police only used one side of the building, and the side directly across from McDonald's was the annual Eastfield Halloween Haunted House. This awesome green sign hung across the brick facade, with a skeleton beckoning us to visit. This haunted attraction gave 9-year-old Elton nightmares, and I remember debating with my mother whether Dracula worked for the devil, or was it the other way around? I was surprised that anyone could ever think that a vampire would be second fiddle to anyone or anything... I just didn't buy it.
Inside, I will always remember this McDs as quite comfy to sit and enjoy a meal. This is a 180 from the new building. It almost begs you to take your meal and leave. Eat in your car, eat on the way home, but whatever you do, do not eat here! I can feel the store beg.
I get it--I've become the old man, pumping fist at the sky, shouting at clouds today. But the world is changing rapidly and in ways I never imagined would affect me. So, I slink back into things that comfort me. Halloween has been that warm, glowing hug that makes things better. There are moments of childhood that stick with us forever, and the 1986 Halloween at McDonald's is a big one for me. It comes flooding back to me whenever I'm in Dundalk, and at the turn of the season each and every year as the air cools and the leaves fall.
This memory, and ones like it, and the ones you have, are so apart of who we are as individuals and that makes me feel good. It makes me feel alive! I love feeling the collective experience of the many Halloween celebrations that sit in my brain and are recalled whenever I read a Halloween short story collection or watch a Halloween special on TV. Or smell pumpkin spice and apple candles. Or eat a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup pumpkin. These memories are an absolute part of who I am as a human being.
I'm sitting here doing my best to explain and detail why I love Halloween as much as I do; it's impossible. Sitting here at this renovated McDonald's it's proving to me that, while the building is gone, rebuilt like an ugly Phoenix, I still experienced that dinner with my mom and my sister here in October 1986. This is just one great Halloween memory of a cornucopia -- nay, a trick or treat bag -- filled with memories! And I am making new memories every Halloweentober.
To be honest, the new building is not that ugly. In fact, it's kind of nice looking. But it is the very lack of the history that bothers me, and I'll get over it eventually. Right now, it's something that bothers me. Fuck it - I went in, ate a Big Mac and fries with an apple pie and a Coke, and then drove around Dundalk. I really enjoyed my time that I was fortunate to have here...
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