a visit to Yuma's old town

It's an old Kress five and dime store. These stores are well remembered from my youth, because a nickel or a dime was about all I ever had when I went shopping. This one looks like it's life has been extended by turning it into a restaurant. They left the old original vertical sign sticking out from the building that says Kress on it, I like that, it shows they took pride in the buildings heritage.

I got up this morning at the crack of Dawn....9 o'clock, my Dawn cracks a little later than most people's. And went to the old part of town in Yuma to see what was going on. Just like I had hoped there was nothing going on so I could park anywhere I wanted and take a few pictures.

I've always found that Sunday mornings are the best time to do this because some of the people are in church, a few are still asleep, that would usually be me, and the rest are laying around the house nursing a hangover. So that just leaves me and most of the town bums as the only ones on the street.

I don't mind being in town with all the bums because I blend in with them fairly well. They tend to leave me alone because I look as broke as they are and they don't Panhandle each other. Carrying my Canon camera around can be a bit of a problem but they figure I stole it.

While I was downtown I went to Walmart which was about 3 miles away from the old town area and found that like some other Walmart's in the desert areas, their parking lot was covered with solar panels that you park under in the shade. What a brilliant idea. In the summer Yuma is incredibly hot and being able to park your car in the shade while you shop at Walmart will bring in a lot more customers. And if that wasn't good enough the solar panels are powering the store. brilliant.

It was fun shopping this morning because it was about 10:30 and there was hardly anybody in the store, it was great, I was in and out in no time. I ought to do all my shopping early on a Sunday morning it would be a lot easier. But then there's the problem of getting out of bed at the crack of Dawn.

                     theboondork

I don't know what this building is but I like the looks of it.

The old part of town is basically one street three or four blocks long and from what I understand most of the buildings date from the 1920s that were rebuilt after the last big Colorado River flood that wiped out the town.

When I first got the town it was pretty quiet, there was just me and the bum in the red coat across the street from my truck. He would flop off the bench every once in a while so I just stayed on my side of street figuring he wasn't physically capable of crossing the road to bother me.

There are so many microbreweries in the country I'm not sure how they make a living.