From time to time I Google old locations looking for scenes from the past. I am distressed that venerable old buildings no longer exist, nor can I even find any references or photos.

When I first moved to New York, the Overseas Press Club occupied a Victorian style mansion situated on its own block on Park Avenue and 41st Street. For some years, before I worked for The Times, I worked nearby as factotum to a management consultant. I would go out of my way to pass this building when taking a lunchtime walk. It was a stunning piece of old architecture and I loved it. Then progress came, it was torn down, and a high rise was put in its place. The Press Club took space in the Chemist’s Club on 45th Street. Hard times had fallen on private clubs and the Chemists group leased space to the Press Club to offset expenses. (Young chemists, I guess, were not joining gentlemen’s clubs.) This too was a great building, the interior every bit as grand as could be, just that it wasn’t a mansion on its own block. I went to many a fine dinner at this press club, and climbed its curved stairway many times to the smoking balcony, just to look down. Their restaurant was first rate. I particularly recommend the steak tartare before it became risky to order raw meat.

In Chicago, in my old rundown neighborhood that has been totally replaced by truly nothing buildings set far apart and looking depressingly institutional, there was a little triangular block that was occupied by a 12- or so storey building in the traditional “flatiron” shape. At street level there was a drugstore and a little restaurant, and the elevator took one up to a dentist’s office and similar rentals. The drugstore was owned by a man named Corson. I went to school with his daughters, Angeline and Jenny. The Corsons were Greek, the name having been Anglicized. Where are you now, dear girls? The building is gone and seemingly no record exists, let alone a photo.

I looked up the library of my childhood, a mansion on Ashland Boulevard in Chicago. Many mansions once lined this Chicago street, later turned into rooming houses, no longer the residences of the rich. My library was called “The Chase House Library.” So I looked it up. The search yielded only the name of Salmon Chase, a prominent politican of the Civil War era and I surmised that he had at one time lived in this very mansion and donated it. But I could find no reference, and, of course, no photos.

If I had it to do over, I would save every phone book from every part of my life, just to prove to myself that I had lived it, known these places, they were not figments of my imagination, I have not gone nuts, I was there, wasn’t I? Of course, there would, by now, be a lot of phone books, but our crawl space is full of Ed's old stuff, including a box I have labeled "totally useless kitchen stuff" that he wont let me dispose of, so why not?

In Star Trek, The Next Generation (a series I followed intensely at one time), there was a recreational system of holographic living where you could put yourself into any situation past or present. You could recreate the past, enter it, see old friends, family, locales, play out a scenario that, of course, you are inventing, but it seems real. Then you leave, and everything goes back into its surreal box. And it didn’t happen, but I bet I’d feel better. Another feature I liked about this series is where you could say to a device in your living quarters, I’d like to eat now – a T-bone, rare (it would appear), no make that a Porterhouse (the steak would change), and you could go on like this, each time, getting exactly what you wanted until you satisfied your inner wish. I’d certainly use that for, let’s say, a grand piano. “A 1935 Steinway, please, B model, black ebony,” thank you very MUCH.

xx, Teal, reeling from reality