It took me a while, but I thought of a puny handful... Regina hasn't changed much since I was but a tow-headed nipper, but the changes I did note were for the worse; the giant money and time-sucking casino that used to be a fairly attractive Deco train station, the obvious signs of a municipal government with ties to the concrete industry - they have way too many parking lots and parkades - anything that doesn't move has been paved. As well, the time-honored Yippersville malaise has been distinctly super-sized somewhere in the intervening years between dreaded visits. The grey-brown dusty armpit of my youth has lost its deodorant forever. These memories are fossils now:
The Crescent Tea Room - This was a joint just around the corner from my grandparents' house, half convenience store and half cafe. There was no "tea room" in sight, the name surviving from some earlier incarnation, I gather. The cafe was a childhood joy though, all googie-patterned naughahyde and boomerang pink formica with cheap Chinese touches like the tasseled paper lanterns and red wallpaper with dragons. I remember being fascinated by the dumbwaiter behind the diner counter that lead to the steamy depths of the mysterious kitchen. My grandfather used to haul me over for a milkshake now and then, and if he was not as savagely grumpy as usual we might also get some fries and gravy. But sitting over his strawberry milkshake in its frosty metal container, the years seemed to peel off of him as he would become almost giddy with his enjoyment of the treat. Me and my bratty friends used to steal pop bottles from behind the store and then casually march
around up front to cash them in for candy money - until we finally got caught
by an outraged and stick-wielding Mr. Chu. Lesson learned. The last time I saw the place it was a soulless, antiseptic coffee-can of a pseudo 7-11.
Buffalo Days - Your typical third-rate Summer Fair and Exhibition, but by Regina standards a whirlwind of high-octane thrills and nerve-jangling excitement. Again, memory and the displacement of time have turned it into something else, something cinematic, something sticky with romance - the deep-fried smells, the muggy summer nights all lit up with carnival lights, the chaotic din of the little Midway, and of course the clunky, rusty old rides that have all slowly disappeared over the years, replaced with shorter, more intense, and charmless "experiences" like the "Chevron Rip Your Face Off-A-Whirl" or the "Panasonic Volcano Sky-Blast Explodo-roller."
Royal Saskatchewan Museum - I'm not sure what makes it so regal, but this tiny little marble wonder enthralled me no end as a kid; every summer I'd have to take another tour. Plus, on a sizzling prairie day, they had the strongest air-conditioning in town. But it was the Natural History/Life Sciences wing that captivated me, not so much for its elky and pelicany content, but more for the big life-size dioramas that contained them. I suppose to a budding creative noodle it was a "how did they do that?" kind of fascination, and it's weird to go back years later and see the same pumas and badgers forever frozen in their little half 3-d, half 2-d worlds.
Leslie Nielsen was born in Regina in 1926. There are 143 public monuments to him scattered tastefully throughout the city, all made of concrete. Don't call him Shirley.