When I think of the word "ridge" I think of a place in Garland, Texas, which still exists, which occupied a singular space in my life for many years. In addition to living for a short time on a street called Ridgewood - which I talked about here - I lived for a time next to a place called - as you can see in the sign there - the Ridgewood Shopping Center.
Here are some places I've written about it before - a specific set of memories about the part of the center nearest to the apartments where I lived here, & about the library I spent way too much time in here, & about the carnivals that might shop in the empty parking lots here. Here is an article about the Ridgewood Theater, with lots of info in the comments.
Here are some places I've written about it before - a specific set of memories about the part of the center nearest to the apartments where I lived here, & about the library I spent way too much time in here, & about the carnivals that might shop in the empty parking lots here. Here is an article about the Ridgewood Theater, with lots of info in the comments.
As I said, I lived next to this space for at least four years, from around 1977 to 1982. I can still walk around the space in my head. I was there when they opened a Minyard's - though I was not a paying customer, still they gave me a little plant which I never took care of & it died in my room. I shoplifted there, & at the local TG&Y, & at a little pharmacy called Drug Mart. There was a Sears store where I think people picked up things they ordered - it wasn't a giant Sears department store, just a little showroom or maybe an outlet store. Around the back, there would be giant boxes as for refrigerators & other appliances which we would take & make into big forts in the filthy parking lot behind the store. We would spend hours making them & probably disgruntled employees would break them down & throw them back into the trash the next day.
When video game spaces became a thing, someone opened an arcade on one of the side areas of the shopping center. My mother, who worked, would give me & my little brother money for dinner - imagine that! we fed ourselves sometimes when we were next even yet tweens - & we might buy a can of Spaghetti-o's & use the rest to put in arcade games we never got good at. That space closed & a Domino's Pizza opened - which I believe is still there.
In fact, the shopping center is still there. The area now being predominantly Latino, there's a Fiesta & another discount shopping center which seem to be the dominant businesses there. There's a Family Dollar where the Sears outlet store used to be. The theater stands unused for decades now - I think I last time I went in there was in the early 1980s, before high school. Indeed, the last time I did most anything in that shopping center was when I lived near it. The information I have about it now is by going briefly to Goober Maps to look around. My oldest sister, who lived quite near it till her death in 2015, had decided to go to other, farther shopping centers by the 21st century - tho I remember a time when she shopped at that Minyard's & new everyone there & introduced me as "my brother who's in college."
Wow I can actually still walk around that Minyard's in my head. The magazine rack - where the comics were too - were in a back corner of the store where the restrooms were. I'd hang out back there & read comics - especially the oversized tabloid editions which they did not get at the convenience store at which my mother worked - & then sneak back into the employee area where the restrooms were not to use the bathroom but to drink from the water fountain they had there.
My oldest sister would often keep, along with her son, our niece, the only two I think that were born at the time (my oldest brother's niece was around, too, but older & my sister never watched her), & I have a fond memories of pushing them through the aisles in a shopping cart & spinning it around. They of course loved it & my sister hated it - but I always wanted to give them the sort of fun I wanted as a kid.
Mostly now I think about walking home from the library to my apartment complex with an armful of books. Walking through the big parking lot which never held as many cars as it could - it's why they'd put traveling carnivals there! Sometimes in the heat, sometimes in winter gloom. I would narrate my life as if I were the only person left alive - always pretending, always in my head - & the books were how I would keep myself a part of humanity. What television show or book or movie or comic was I pretending to be in? It wasn't all that far off to how I really felt.
My relationship to Ridgewood Shopping Center, like I said, was situational. I hardly ever went back once I had left the area. Though I did I think in 2015 take some pictures there - one of which is above, the other of which - this is the theater's marquee - is here:
When video game spaces became a thing, someone opened an arcade on one of the side areas of the shopping center. My mother, who worked, would give me & my little brother money for dinner - imagine that! we fed ourselves sometimes when we were next even yet tweens - & we might buy a can of Spaghetti-o's & use the rest to put in arcade games we never got good at. That space closed & a Domino's Pizza opened - which I believe is still there.
In fact, the shopping center is still there. The area now being predominantly Latino, there's a Fiesta & another discount shopping center which seem to be the dominant businesses there. There's a Family Dollar where the Sears outlet store used to be. The theater stands unused for decades now - I think I last time I went in there was in the early 1980s, before high school. Indeed, the last time I did most anything in that shopping center was when I lived near it. The information I have about it now is by going briefly to Goober Maps to look around. My oldest sister, who lived quite near it till her death in 2015, had decided to go to other, farther shopping centers by the 21st century - tho I remember a time when she shopped at that Minyard's & new everyone there & introduced me as "my brother who's in college."
Wow I can actually still walk around that Minyard's in my head. The magazine rack - where the comics were too - were in a back corner of the store where the restrooms were. I'd hang out back there & read comics - especially the oversized tabloid editions which they did not get at the convenience store at which my mother worked - & then sneak back into the employee area where the restrooms were not to use the bathroom but to drink from the water fountain they had there.
My oldest sister would often keep, along with her son, our niece, the only two I think that were born at the time (my oldest brother's niece was around, too, but older & my sister never watched her), & I have a fond memories of pushing them through the aisles in a shopping cart & spinning it around. They of course loved it & my sister hated it - but I always wanted to give them the sort of fun I wanted as a kid.
Mostly now I think about walking home from the library to my apartment complex with an armful of books. Walking through the big parking lot which never held as many cars as it could - it's why they'd put traveling carnivals there! Sometimes in the heat, sometimes in winter gloom. I would narrate my life as if I were the only person left alive - always pretending, always in my head - & the books were how I would keep myself a part of humanity. What television show or book or movie or comic was I pretending to be in? It wasn't all that far off to how I really felt.
My relationship to Ridgewood Shopping Center, like I said, was situational. I hardly ever went back once I had left the area. Though I did I think in 2015 take some pictures there - one of which is above, the other of which - this is the theater's marquee - is here:
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