The past revisited

A couple of days ago, Alan and I visited Fredericton, New Brunswick, where I spent some months of my life in 1974. It was winter and very cold with an unusual amount of snow that year. My memories of that time revolve about drinking lots of beer, snowshoeing in the woods and working at a small rehabilitation centre where I was the only OT. I shared a house with a bunch of other strangers to the city, one of whom we will be visiting in California later this trip. It was a funny place back then and not much seems to have changed. I easily found our old flat, on the ground floor of a run down old house on the riverbank. Apart from a change of color, it looked pretty much the same - in need of TLC and a couple of hundred thousand dollars. Strangely, while looking at the old place, the owner came out and started talking to me. He would love to fix it up better, he told me, but just getting the place to meet current regulations - fire standards etc, had taken about all of his capital. He lived on the top floor and was forced to change the configuration of the flats due to safety standards. My old room, for example, was accessed by the old servants stairs ( very narrow and windy) which are no longer considered safe, so that room now belongs to what was the upstairs flat. I found it hard to remember the downtown area and could not find the pub where I spent so much time, but probably it needed so much spent on it too, and there are new houses along the river there now. The old rehab centre has been incorporated into the new hospital and is no longer in existence. It's still a very pretty city though and the weather was warm and sunny.