Digital via digital via digital: I visit my hometown of Lancaster PA via googlemaps.com and memory lane comes into view. It's almost scary.

As I first traveled back, I stopped at buildings like this one, and the one below, which contain much of the character of my childhood environment, running as I did through streets and alleyways.

When I was a kid, you could get subs and hoagies here - I think you still can.

This used to be Robert Hall's clothing store that sold inexpensive children's clothing. We got our school uniforms here.

This little building hasn't changed much in 50 years. It's across from the wading pool at Rodney Park.

A garage in Crystal Alley, the useful corridor between our house and the playground at Rodney Park. The Union Hall is in the background on the left.

This is where I grew up. A duplex on Fourth Street. We lived in the one on the right.

This was one of the first houses to be built on what used to be rich Lancaster county farmland. It's right up the street from our old house, on the corner of 4th and Manor Streets.

A bar near my house where I used to go with my dad. He had beer and I had orange soda, which was an amazing treat. I still remember what the place smelled like.

A parking lot in the space that used to be the Strand Theater, where I spent many hours watching the output of American International Pictures. 

Used to be the Thriftway Supermarket. Now part of Kuntzler meats on Manor Street.

Lancaster Opera Workshop. Is this where we went for the Lilliput Pop Concerts?

St. Joseph's School. Yes, I went here from kindergarten to 8th grade.

The schoolyard used to seem like an enormous expansive space. It's just a small yard.

This was the Social Security Office, where I got my official NUMBER when I was 15, so I could start working.

    

On Water Street, at the back of the Fulton Opera House, which used to be a jail. Here, in 1763, vigilantes lynched 14 native people of the Conestoga Nation.

The Pressroom, a good restaurant right downtown, in a building that dates from the mid-1700s.

The old colonial town hall with the Central Market in the back (to the right). The market dates from the 1840s and the town hall is a bit older.

Thaddeus Stevens' house, a stop on the Underground Railroad.

Lancaster, Pa.

The train station in Lancaster hasn't changed much in decades.
It's a beautiful old station, needing a little repair.

The Marriott Hotel was built on top of the Watt & Shand Department Store on Penn Square, right in the center of town.
The lobby, above, incorporates a colonial era building and does it rather well. Then there's the exercise room and lots of extra space on the lower level, which also incorporates the back of the house owned by abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens, which, upon excavation, revealed a stop on the Underground Railroad.

Penn Sqare at night ...

and views of Lancaster as the morning fog drifts over the city from the Conestoga Creek.
The Greist Building at far right, next to the 19th century Farmer's market and the colonial tourist board, which was once the town hall.

Looking westward towards the 8th Ward, with the Kunzler Meat Packing Co., in the center of the photograph, sending off steam. St. Joseph's Church steeple just to the left of that.

The Greist Building used to be Lancaster's tallest building, but the Marriott Hotel, just across the square, has taken top honors in that department.

St. Joseph's Church, built in 1842 by German Catholic immigrants.

The humble 19th century row houses on St. Joseph's Street.

Moving up a notch, the red brick row houses in the 8th Ward.

And moving up still further, a beautiful 19th century town house on South Duke Street.

A colonial era house on South Queen Street.

And the Thaddeus Stevens House, above - just a few details.

And the cops and sniffer-dogs that everyone is getting used to at train stations. Welcome to our free society!