Talk:Owatonna

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Owatonna. As I say it my head is flooded with memories of youth and the good times had because we were young. I am of an advanced age now but in the early 60s there wasn't a better place to be alive. A small town, quite indescript but peaceful, with a misnamed meandering tributary called the Straight River running through it. Owatonna was America; American Grafitti in real life. Muscle cars, street rods or maybe just your old man's or old lady's loaner cruised North to South and around Central Park and around again; who knows how many times. That was the way Friday nights and Saturday nights were. Cruising with your best girl, or maybe someone else's best girl, and the radio set on KDWB, WLS or some station out of Little Rock Arkansas that seems to be outside of my memory right now. Meeting friends, and sometimes people that weren't friends, at the A&W rootbeer stand on the East side of town was always on the agenda. The rootbeer stand is gone now. When cuising no longer held our interest, that short drive to Kohlmeier's gravel pit, the old swimming hole, with someone who was the most important person in your life was all that any of us ever needed. You were with the most beautiful person in the world and you were in love. There may be someone reading this now that does, but do we ever love like that at any other time in our lives? Youth is not wasted on the young. It may be a different town today, and maybe only to me because I am no longer as young as I was in 1963. There will be others, though, who will live the life and live their younger years in a peaceful little town in Southern Minnesota or maybe southern or northern somewhere else. I can only hope that they will be able to make as many wonderful memories with their younger days, where ever they may be, as I did.