There's a particular quality to the light in certain memories—golden and thick, like honey poured over everything we were. That's how I remember Hampton. Not the Hampton of now, but the Hampton that lived between the cracks of our childhoods, in the spaces where we felt invincible and safe and known.

You know the one. The Hampton where you could smell the crab plant from I-64, and instead of wrinkling your nose, you'd roll down the windows and breathe it in deep because it meant you were almost home. Where that smell—salt and steam and honest work—was as much a part of the landscape as the air itself. It was the smell of summer, of watermen pulling up before dawn, of a city that still worked with its hands.

The Places That Made Us

We congregated at the altar of High's Ice Cream, pressing our faces against the glass case, deciding between fudge ripple and bubble gum like it was the most important choice we'd ever make. Fourteen flavors felt like infinite possibility then. Mrs. whoever-worked-that-day knew your order by heart, knew your family, probably knew your grandmother. That's how it was. Everyone knew everyone, and somehow that felt like safety instead of surveillance.

Friday nights meant Buckroe Beach, and not just the beach but the beach—the one with the amusement park where the Ferris wheel lit up the evening sky like a promise. You could spend all day there with a handful of tickets and a group of friends whose last names you'd carry with you forever, even after you'd forgotten their faces. The roller coaster wasn't the biggest or the fastest, but it was ours. The sound of the waves mixed with screams of delight mixed with the calliope music from the carousel, and that symphony meant summer was real, childhood was real, Hampton was the center of the universe.

Then there was Saturday morning at Giant Open Air Market—open twenty-four hours because some things in Hampton never slept. Your parents would drag you there at what felt like dawn, and you'd stumble behind them past the bakery (those donuts, still warm), past the pizza counter, past the florist, past the laundromat attached to the building like everything you needed in life could be found in one place. And maybe it could. There was even a club upstairs, though you wouldn't know about that until you were older, until you'd sneak up there yourself and feel like you'd discovered a secret that had been hiding in plain sight all along.

The Rhythm of Our Days

Sunday meant church and then Sammy & Nick's, Shoney's, or Quincy's—those buttered rolls at Quincy's that would melt in your mouth, so perfect that even now, decades later, you can taste them when you close your eyes. Family restaurants where families actually went, where you'd see your teacher at one booth and your coach at another, where the waitresses called everyone "honey" and meant it.

The Coliseum Mall wasn't just a mall. It was the beating heart of teenage social life, the place where you went to see and be seen, where you'd spend hours walking laps with your friends, stopping at Orange Julius, browsing through Camelot Music, trying on clothes at Leggett's you couldn't afford but dreamed about anyway. The Christmas decorations they'd string up in winter—the whole boulevard would glow, and the parade would wind through downtown, and for a few weeks every year, Hampton felt like it had been dipped in magic.

Bay Days. God, Bay Days. The whole city would converge on downtown, and it felt like a family reunion for people who weren't even related. Jazz would float through the humid air, people would set up lawn chairs like they were claiming territory for a kingdom, and for one perfect weekend, nothing else mattered. Not work, not worry, not the fact that you had to go back to school soon. Just music and neighbors and the feeling that you belonged to something bigger than yourself.

The Spaces Between

But it wasn't just the big landmarks. It was Plaza Roller Rink on a Friday night, holding hands with your first crush during the couples' skate while "Endless Love" played through crackling speakers. It was the Ivory Horse where you'd sneak in with a fake ID, feeling grown and dangerous, penny draft nights making you feel rich even when you were broke.

It was Bill's BBQ after a football game, still in your letterman jacket, feeling like a hero even if you'd spent the whole game on the bench. It was Fisherman's Wharf and Captain George's and all those seafood places where the crabs were so fresh they'd practically just climbed off the boat. It was Ming Gate's egg rolls, the Oasis where your older brother worked as a busboy, Shakey's Pizza where the jukebox never stopped and the pitcher of Coke never emptied.

It was driving down Mercury Boulevard when it still had service lanes and the flyover still existed—that impossible concrete pretzel that seemed to defy physics. You could navigate this city in your sleep. Left at the Sinclair Circle. Right where Circuit City used to be. Straight past where Montgomery Ward stood. The geography of home written in your muscle memory.

What We Didn't Know We Had

We didn't know we were living in the last good years. We didn't know that these places—these monuments to our ordinary, extraordinary childhoods—would disappear one by one like stars blinking out. The amusement park. The mall. Bay Days itself, canceled after violence that felt like a betrayal of everything the event had meant.

We didn't know that "low crime" wasn't just a statistic but a feeling—the feeling of walking home after dark without fear, of leaving your bike on the lawn, of your mother sending you to the store alone when you were eight because Hampton was safe and you were safe in it.

We didn't know that Fort Monroe would close, that the cannon at five o'clock would fall silent, that all those military families who rotated through would take their kids and their traditions somewhere else, leaving holes in the fabric of who we were.

We didn't know that respect, common sense, decency, class—all those things people mention now in that wistful way—weren't universal constants but gifts we were lucky to receive. Gifts that could be lost.

The Hampton That Remains

Former residents move away and spend decades trying to recreate the feeling of Hampton somewhere else. They can't. Because it wasn't just the places—though God knows we loved those places with a fierceness that surprises us still. It was the people. The neighbors who would watch out for you. The teachers who remembered your name twenty years later. The old man at the hardware store who gave you bazooka gum every time you came in. The sense that you were part of a community that stretched back generations and would stretch forward just as far.

Some of us still live there, watching the Hampton we knew fade like a photograph left too long in the sun. We drive past the empty lot where Buckroe's amusement park used to make children scream with joy, and we can still hear the echoes if we listen hard enough. We shop at the ghost of Coliseum Mall, trying to remember what store used to be where. We attend different churches, different schools, different restaurants, but sometimes—just sometimes—we'll run into someone from before, and our eyes will meet, and without saying a word we'll know: You remember too. You were there. You know what we had.

And the ones who left—they come back for visits and barely recognize the place. "I used to live here," they say, and their voices catch on that word used, because the Hampton they're looking for isn't on any map. It exists only in that golden light, in memories of fudge ripple ice cream and Ferris wheels and buttered rolls, in the smell of crabs steaming and the sound of jazz floating through a summer evening.

What We Carry

We carry Hampton with us like a scar that doesn't hurt anymore but never quite heals. In the way we expect neighbors to be neighborly. In our certainty that seafood should taste a certain way. In our muscle memory of streets that have been renamed, buildings that have been demolished, entire ways of life that have been paved over.

We carry it in our children's names—borrowed from streets we used to walk, friends we used to have, places that shaped us. We carry it in the stories we tell, even though we know we're boring people who weren't there, who can't understand why we get that faraway look when we say "Remember when..."

But we do remember. We remember everything.

We remember when Hampton was ours, when it held us close and safe, when we thought the amusement park would always be there, the mall would always be full, Bay Days would always bring us together. When we thought nothing would ever change, and we would never leave, and if we did leave we could always come home to the Hampton we knew.

Some places mark you. They get under your skin and into your bones, and you carry them with you no matter how far you travel or how many years pass. Hampton did that to us. Hampton made us. And even though the Hampton we knew exists now only in memory, only in the space between what was and what is—it's still there. Still ours. Still home.

The light in those memories is still golden. The ice cream still tastes perfect. The Ferris wheel still turns against a summer sky. And somewhere, always, Bay Days is happening, and we're all there together, and we're all young again, and Hampton is everything we needed it to be.

We just didn't know to hold on tighter while we had it.

But we remember. God, how we remember.