I will always remember Waldos Great Flying Pizza Company in Mililani Hawaii. It had been open since 1977 and closed sometime in 2012 according to Yelp. At one point the location had been huge, but we knew it in its smaller iteration. As a kid I used to go there with my parents, it was a homey place, lots of natural woods and such.
In 2008 my friends and I started visiting Waldo’s daily to do our homework, talk and have pizza. The location had a vinyl record juke box that let you play 4 songs for a quarter and the management had no issues with us occupying a table for long periods of time. . .I guess that was a sign of the decline. . .
We knew the staff well and by 2010 we were staying into the night on Fridays for Karaoke, we had learned every song on that vinyl juke box, it was a good time.
2011 is when we noticed something was going wrong, as we transitioned from Highschool to College we maintained the habit of going to Waldos to do school work but items were always sold out or unavailable. . .more than half the menu at times. "
Then it was gone.
From a small kid having pizza with my family and renting videos from the Blockbuster next door to a college student working on prerequisite classes we made a lot of memories at Waldos, I have maybe hundreds, of pictures and videos of our group there and our experience there was only a fraction of the life of the restaurant itself.
I will never forget the location, staff or the time we spent there.
What about you? Do you have a similar place that has been lost to time?
I remember Kmart. But I’m not talking about the more recent ones. I’m talking about the good old blue light special Kmart my friends and I used to walk to when we were kids. It had a cafe in there that had the best milkshakes. It was in a shopping center that had a meat store in it that smelled SO GOOD. I can still remember that smell.
My grandparents’ house was a ranch style single story, with a large backyard (complete with swing set, a crabapple tree, sandbox, and hammock). There was the “new” room, which was my grandmas sewing room, and where we had tea parties on a little wooden foldout table with my grandmas nice China. I’d drink hot chocolate she’d have coffee and we’d eat cookies we’d baked earlier that day. Then the living room had two big recliners and I’d sit on my grandpas lap in one or on the bright green carpet which was sooo soft while we watched basketball. The front parlor was where the fireplace was, though I don’t think I can remember it ever being actually lit. But the piano was also in there so we (my cousins and I) had all our “pageants” in there. There are more memories for every other room in the house. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the smell of the place. I thought it was just my grandparents smell, you know, but when they moved it was never the same. They moved into an assisted living/retirement community when they finally really couldn’t take care of the place and sold to a developer who split the land in two (it was on a corner) and built two new McMansions in its place.
Oh man, that reminds me of my great grandparents house up past Kahala Mall. It’s a MASSIVE home, considered a mansion here in Hawaii and like you I have memories in every room.
When my great grandmother passed the estate was supposed to be split between myself, my parents, my grandmother and my aunt. Unfortunately my aunt pulled some shenanigans while my great grandmother was still alive and we all came to find out that we had been written out, leaving the estate to her alone.
She lives there now but the house is old and she can’t upkeep it properly due to its size, that was one of the reasons why it was to go to all of us. Together we could have maintained it.
The aunt in question is now estranged from the rest of the family and we’ve not been to the house since.
We had been going there since I was like 4 years old every year for Thanksgiving, I can still remember the smell of the main parlor, it had a large koi pond built into it made of white marble.
God knows what it’s like in there now, it’s sad.
Especially for me, someone who wasn’t directly involved in the fallout, my mentality had been “Well, she got the house, cool, let’s move on from this.”
But the rest of my family apparently can’t which is why she’s estranged.
There’s not a lot of us left, to be honest our family isn’t big enough for this petty vendetta, but I have no say in the matter so it is what it is.
I grew up next to one of Europe’s biggest lakes. Nearby there are also two plateu mountains. In one of these mountains, there’s a “crack” formed by erosion, a beautiful valley leading down to the lake. This area is covered by a beautiful forest, where wild garlic grows everywhere.
We used to make hikes from the top through the valley, walking on this narrow path through the forest, crossing small rivers and creaks on old, wooden (creaky) bridges. At the bottom it flattens out and you can sit in the flowers next to the lake. There is a small fire pit next to the water.
We were there at least every summer during my childhood, calmly (as calmly you can with kids at least) walking through the forest and then grilling hot dogs and marshmallows down at the lake. I will never forget the smell of the wild garlic
When I was 14 (1998), I went to Russia on a school exchange trip.
As part of it, we went to a country camp about 80 miles away from Moscow. It’s probably the most beautiful place I’ve ever been.
The snow was up to my knees - and this was the start of April - but the top layer had frozen, so it sparkled like someone had scattered tiny diamonds all over it.
At night, the lake was a still, velvety black, and the moon’s reflection looked as though there was a 10p piece dropped there.
It’s sad to think that this place is now in a country ruled by a sadistic despot.
Moraine Lake in Banff National Park. The lake and the mountains are still there, of course, but the experience has changed a lot in the last 20 years.
Even more so in the last 10 years. It has always been popular, but nearby Lake Louise was more famous.
The first time I visited would have been in the mid-1970s. It was fairly busy, or so I thought at the time. In those days, “busy” meant sharing a viewpoint with more than three strangers.
My second-last visit was in 2016. By then, people who arrived later in the day were finding that the parking lot was full. Parking on the shoulders blocked access for emergency vehicles, so signs were up on the road banning parking on the roadside. We had to circle the parking lot a couple of times before parking at around 11 a.m.
By 2019, once the parking lot filled up, cars queued up along the road waiting to get a parking spot. Again, this made emergency access difficult, so staff closed the road whenever the parking lot was full. So in 2019, we made an earlier start. Snagged one of the last parking spots at 7:00 a.m.
Last year, the parking lot was full 24/7. No, I am not making that up. So this year, access will only be by Parks Canada shuttle bus. Ticket reservations open in about a month. I hope this gives the wildlife and vegetation a chance to recover, and I’m glad I saw it while I could.
Whist it may be boring compared to the picturesque places described, my current workplace. Unfortunately, due to Events (that I will not go into in public) I am leaving at the end of March. It’s a shame because it has a lot of quirks and character, but I won’t be able to forget it.
