The Old New Neighborhoods

We had stores like Uncle Ken tells us about back in the Old Neighborhood, and maybe they still do, but I don't live there anymore.  It wasn't a bad neighborhood, but it certainly wasn't Beaglesonia. Uncle Ken must have found something unappealing about the Old Neighborhood because he doesn't live there anymore either.  Since we have both lived in our new neighborhoods a long time, we can't hardly call them our new neighborhoods anymore, so I coined the term "old new neighborhoods".  To my knowledge Trump has not used that term yet and, if he starts using it tomorrow, remember that you heard it first from Talks With Beagles.

Back in my day, the Chicago Loop was a barren wasteland where traffic was bad and there was no place to park.  I understand that conditions there have improved somewhat since then, but I'm pretty sure that it's still not Beaglesonia.  Of course Beaglesonia is not perfect either.  There is nothing within walking distance except my deer blind and our mailbox and even those things seem to get farther away every year.  The Walmart is less than five miles away, most of it on country roads where traffic is not an issue.  I can usually find anything that I want within ten miles and, if I can't, I just order it from Amazon.

The employees at Walmart are just as friendly and helpful as those in the other stores in town, and they all speak English.  The parking lot drains into a small fenced in pond with cattails around the edges.  Most of the other storm drains in town run into the river, but pollution has not been an issue since the storm drains were made separate from the sanitary sewers decades ago.  The sanitary sewers go through a treatment plant before emptying into the Straits, right next to a public beach that, to my knowledge, has never been shut down for water quality issues.  Of course the water is barely warm enough to swim in for only a couple months a year, which might have something to do with it.