Going Home

Going Home

Recently I had the opportunity to return to my hometown; the place where I was born and raised.  I don’t go there much anymore; actually hardly ever.  My family has pretty much either died or moved away and, in fact, I have only one cousin, who is in her eighties left there.  I go back now almost exclusively for high school reunions and funerals – my last trip, unfortunately, for this latter reason.

Going home now is a bittersweet experience.  Bitter from the loss of so many loved ones like my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and an increasing number of old friends.  Bitter as I see the empty stores in my hometown; the local drugstore where I drank cherry cokes made at the soda fountain and spent countless hours playing matchbook football at the diner tables, the clothing store where my mother bought my first pair of jeans, the A&P gone and replaced by a Family Dollar store.  There are no local groceries anymore and, for that matter, no local hardware, no local banks.  It is the passing of a uniquely southern way of life that will never come again; a time when churches were unlocked day and night, a time when neighbors shared telephone party lines, and we all waited anxiously for the next new movie at the local theater, which is also long removed from the scene. 

 Yet there is sweetness to going home, going to a place where I will always be “Jimmy”, not Jim and never James; a comfort to see people still there who tell me I look more and more like my Dad.  It is nice to ride by the house where I grew up, drive up the big hill we sledded down in winter snow; though in truth even the hill is not as high and long as I remember. 

There is a comfort in greeting the friends of my youth.  Except for my immediate family there is nowhere else I can go for so many shared memories.  Those memories are the sweetest of all.  I often play a game with myself in which I try to remember the first time I met these dear, dear people and more often than not fail, not because of a senior’s memory but rather from the fact that they have just always been there.

Thomas Wolfe’s said, “You Can’t Go Home Again”. Clichéd or not it still rings true.  However, once in awhile can back for a visit and taste the bittersweet.