{"id":771,"date":"2011-08-15T21:46:47","date_gmt":"2011-08-16T04:46:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nerdhive.org\/glob\/?p=771"},"modified":"2012-05-24T23:10:42","modified_gmt":"2012-05-25T06:10:42","slug":"russell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/?p=771","title":{"rendered":"Russell"},"content":{"rendered":"

2011\/08\/15 – one part of several to come; lots to cover about this day. Might take me a few days to catch up with it all.<\/p>\n

In the early 1980s my father was working in construction in Calgary, but saw the end of the boom coming.\u00a0 My parents wanted to buy some land to live on, so my mother and I spent a lot of time travelling around looking at properties.\u00a0 In 1982 we bought 80 acres near Angusville, Manitoba, and moved there.\u00a0 More about the land in a later post.<\/p>\n

Angusville being a tiny town, the two nearby towns that we went to for supplies were Russell and Rossburn.\u00a0 I’ll post about Russell<\/a> first because that’s where I arrived first on the current road trip.<\/p>\n

Unlike most prairie towns that are shrinking, Russell is holding on.\u00a0 A couple of buildings have come down and a couple have gone up, but more or less everything is the same as I recall.\u00a0 Except for the main street, which now has the future standing over every corner.\u00a0 Top picture 1992ish, bottom today:<\/p>\n

\"Russel\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Detail on the arches:<\/p>\n

\"d20110815_0020\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There are some new businesses though – there never used to be any chain restaurants here, but now there is an A&W, a Tim Horton’s and a Subway.\u00a0 The old Russell Inn restaurant is still around and still fairly good, and that’s where I prefer to eat.<\/p>\n

The Russell Inn was founded 20+ years ago specifically as an attempt to stave off the slow death of the town by making it a tourist haven.\u00a0 They’ve also developed a ski hill nearby.\u00a0 That plus the town’s location at a major crossroads seem to have done the trick, but it means the town is really counting on the Inn and the tourist trade to stay alive.<\/p>\n

Fond memories ensue.<\/p>\n

Russell is where I did my driving test and first got my driver’s license – I actually learned out in the country in my parents’ vehicles though.\u00a0 I did my driving test in my father’s 3\/4 ton pickup – not an easy thing to parallel park, but otherwise I had no problems.\u00a0 I grew up riding in the front seat all the time, so I was very familiar with the particulars of driving long before I got behind the wheel.<\/p>\n

\"d20110815_0028\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The remains of the town theater (actually there were two, the other being a drive-in on the outskirts; it died first).\u00a0 Disney likenesses probably not authorized.\u00a0 This is where I saw the first and best Transformers movie<\/a>, and also saw Baby<\/a> and Old Yeller<\/a> (man, that one got me good).<\/p>\n

\"d20110815_0017\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The laundromat at the end of the main drag. We came into town every two weeks like clockwork to wash our duds here.\u00a0 For a while they had a Zaxxon<\/a> machine, but I mostly killed time a few blocks away downtown at:<\/p>\n

\"d20110815_0034\"<\/a><\/p>\n

P&D’s Pizza (now an empty lot). P and D were a young husband and wife team who operated a pizza\/burger joint and arcade here.\u00a0 The restaurant was nice because it had high-backed booths with lots of room in them, but of course I was mainly here for the games.\u00a0 They rotated through lots of games and I spent lots and lots of money on them.\u00a0\u00a0 P&D’s was still around when we briefly returned in 1992, and there were newer games then.\u00a0 The main ones I remember from both periods were:<\/p>\n