THE GRAND OLD LADY

She sits inside a small busy city block, along Atlantic Avenue in Del Ray Beach, Florida. Her majestic presence is apparent by the blood-red canopies that adorn the three openings on the front of the building. A small sign is all there is to announce who she is. She is a beautiful modest lady, old and maybe tired, but proud.

As you enter the building of the Colony Hotel, you suddenly hear echoes from the distant past. She sings sweet songs of leisurely days spent under the ceiling fans that hang from all her ceilings. Her floors squeaking from the many happy feet that trod through the years, the depression, the war years, the fifties and sixties, right up to this very day.

I could almost see Bogart sitting at one of the many little tables on the veranda, in his wicker chair, smoke from his cigarette curling up into the slow motion of the fans, a bourbon sitting on the table, as he looked into the eyes of a beautiful woman. The ever-present heat, the sun sitting in a blue field of sky, framing the outside, finished a feeling of calm and serenity.

Her halls, all waiting for someone to occupy one of the many old rooms, the floors, giving way ever so slightly from the many visitors that traveled over her wooden strips. Her elevator, the only one in the house, faces the front desk, operated by a person, who smiles at you when she takes you to your floor. The help, like the check-in person who registered us, accompanied us up to our room, telling us all we wanted to know, about the grand old lady. She listened in on that conversation, lending her own testimonial by what we saw of her. An old phone booth, an old switchboard that occupied a small space that reminded us of yesteryear, of innocent days gone by, forever.

This is the Colony Hotel.

Our room was comfortable and charming. It took me back to my childhood. Looking at the doors and woodwork, the old bed board and dresser, I suddenly remembered events of long ago. I could recall places and people that occupied them, and could hear bits of what they said in those places.

There is a certain romance in things old. They tell a story by the way they look. You are invited to use your own imagination and create your own drama. You can ‘see’ events unfold, that happened decades ago, maybe even hundreds of years ago. Then you look at old people, and wonder what kind of story they could tell you, and what stories you will tell some day.

Please remember my pals Joan and Anita.