- by Cayley Routenburg-Brown

Familiar. My tires crunch the icy snow and I bring my vehicle to a stop on the pebbled drive. I’m at my grandparent’s cozy red brick bungalow in Moggie on a lazy holiday Tuesday. My grandfather bricked this house himself. I’ve been here so many times- the childhood memories are overwhelmingly countless. Nostalgic smells of the wood-burning stove drifting up the stairs and freshly brewed tea in the kitchen catch my senses, trigger my memory, and suddenly catapult me back in time. It’s as if the years have faded away and the clock is absurdly moving backward. My mom-the oldest of their three children, slowly and steadily pouring thick blackstrap molasses into her stainless-steel bowl, greets me first, absent- using spatulas and measuring cups that pre-date her.

Grandma-peeling eggs for lunch, is singing along to the television. My grandfather- especially groggy, makes his way upstairs. Convincingly, covering up his mid-morning nap by fixing his hair. Eventually, sitting across from each other, they smile at me, and then each grab a egg salad sandwich. This love is flawless. This love story is timeless. Looking at the love they have in their eyes after 59 years of marriage is an inspiration to my own- which began during the start of a international pandemic. Listening to the deep tenors of Elvis’ Blue Hawaii and hearing how my grandmother saw it in one of the theatres in Owen Sound with her girlfriends sparks my interest.

One of the theatres? Surely, she means just the Roxy? It’s the only one I’ve known- besides the current Cineplex.
“No, Owen Sound had 4 theatres,” she assures me.
“No, 3,”my grandfather chimes in, aggressively confident that she is incorrect.
“No, 4,”my grandmother lists them off. “The Savoy, The Roxy, The Centre, the Classic.”
“Ok” he says, finally believing her, and smirking. “4.”
She still makes his eyes twinkle.
“And if you weren’t home at a certain time, you’d get fined for going past curfew,” she adds.
4 operating theatres in Owen Sound in the 1960s. Curfews. Fines.
I found myself shaking my head. Imagine, life as a 20 year old in the 1960s.
$2.08 would get you two movie tickets, two hamburgers, and two regular sodas.
Mind. Blown.
What else did I not know about?

I am a bi-product of this area and these people. I’ve grown up in Grey County my whole life. I was raised, baptized, and married in the same town as my grandparents. These roads and rivers are more familiar to me than the veins that run through me. I thought I knew everything there was to know about the golden nuggets of Grey. I considered myself a fairly confident travel guide when my out-of-town friends visited the area. I know where I am from. I know the roots that raised me. Don’t I?

The bowling alley at Sauble Beach that my dad used to work at as a teen, setting up pins. The roller-skating arenas in Durham. The dances at Beavercrest- when it was a high school. The dance school in the old Kilsyth church. The very fact that someone was willing to regularly pay teenagers for folding french fry boxes at the Sauble fry shack during the summer when days were busy. This is not the world I see around me today. Bits and pieces of our local history are falling right through our hands like quicksand without us even noticing. I feel like these memories are running out of a collection of broken hourglasses. I race ferociously to fix them, to save them, to put them in a safe space. I don’t want them to be forgotten. These stories are important to our local history. These stories and memories make us. My grandfather bricked the old West Hill School and the Owen Sound City Hall building. His fingerprints are literally on the history of this city. This time has made me appreciate my space, my family, my area. My story. Having family members from past generations is a blessing.

If you can’t be all together this Christmas-pick up the phone. Listen a little closer. Learn from the stories that made you. Lean in further to the hug that encapsulates you. When I asked about their thoughts on so many years of marriage, they simply said “Where has the time gone?” My answer to that is “The time is now”. We can learn so much from our surroundings if we take the time that is required to do so.