Back home

At work today, I ran into a guy who not only knew where my hometown was, but he also actually knew people from there. He was wearing a shirt from a 5k race in a neighboring town. In fact, his brother is married to a girl one year younger than me, and he "summers" (what a snooty word) at Gun Lake, a local lake and state park we all went to as kids and as teenagers getting our first bit of real freedom away from our parents. Those were some of the best days.

During long summer days away from school, the other girls on my road and I would get on our ten-speed bikes and ride the ten extremely rural miles to Gun Lake, spending the whole day there, eating lunch at the snack bar (*barf*), and then riding home before the street lights in our village began to glow lavender. Looking back, I wonder if our parents were crazy or naive, or if the world really WAS a different place, a safer place for girls of ten to thirteen to be alone but together all day, without worry of personal safety and security. It might have been that we were extraordinarily blessed, as I do remember times we were followed by men in cars or one man in particular on a motorcycle. The fear I felt those days is still pretty fresh in my mind, and I'm guessing that was my gut, the early form of my "ESPN," telling me to beware of the danger around me. But that's a whole 'nother post. For the most part, we were always safe on those long rides--well, they were long for an eleven or twelve year-old. We'd always try to leave for the beach right after our parents left for work, so the ride wouldn't be during the heat of the morning, and then we'd be able to have the maximum time to lie in the sun (*gasp*) and fry.

The transition between the time of "swimming cools you off and is fun" and "I'm too cool to swim" was led by my neighbors Barb and Karen, the girls who liked to determine what was cool for the rest of the girls on our road. They were four grades ahead of me, so come to think of it, it was a miracle they even let me hang out and ride to the beach with them (This was before any of us had licenses to drive or the nerve to take a car without one.). They knew all the boys, some of whom were even older than they were and had licenses and cars--bad news for girls of such impressionable ages. Anyway, I look back and can't remember anything TOO harmful happening to me or because of the carelessness with which I approached most summers. My hometown and the surrounding areas were, in fact, remarkably safe, mostly because of the limited population (about 1800 people in the official village limits when I lived there in the 1980's). Everybody pretty much did know everybody else and their business.

The actual layout of the town enabled a good bit of people's nosiness. Our town happened to be divided in half by a river, and as you might imagine in a small town, there was only one bridge. If you needed to go anywhere in my town, you nearly HAD to take the bridge, and just up the hill to the east of the bridge was the town's only pizza joint (back then) and one of the larger bars with such a pathetic name I can't mention it here (The bar was named after cow dung.). Most of the younger people hung out at the pizzeria, and plenty of the grown-ups hung out at the bar; both places had the ability to look out over the only road going through our town to see who was going where and with whom and at what time. All this was fine, I guess, as long as you didn't mind. I, in particular, did mind.

Part of the problem was that by being in such a small town, you usually can't just be who you are. Kids in general are saddled with this problem because they are necessarily shaped by their parents and all the b.s. going on at home and in school. And I was no exception to this. My home life wasn't the most wonderful, and my school life was a mix of achievement and frustration, so it's no surprise that when I run into someone from my hometown or when I meet someone who knows someone I used to know, I cringe inside. It's not that I was the "queen bee" or anything like that (though I did have a stage of this in fifth grade); it was more that I was an angry kid who struggled to find a way to express it and get rid of the bad feelings. I look back and for the most part am not thrilled with what I remember myself to be. *I* know that it was just a stage in the development of who I became, but those people, the ones who went to school with me daily, well, I'm afraid they would identify me now as the same person I was then. Going to my one and only high school reunion was interesting. Heh.

So I went back to my hometown for the funeral of my father, and I've driven through there a time or two since then to see what's what and who's who. You can be certain I didn't recognize anyone after all this time, and the landscape had changed dramatically. My mother and sister don't live in the town or even nearby, so there's no reason for me to go back anymore. I guess it's still a great place to raise kids; perhaps if I had been someone else, I would have stayed, married someone local, and raised my kids there. I know of lots of kids from my graduating class who did just that. But I don't think I would have been able to become who God intended me to be had I stayed. I do know that it's not really much of a small town anymore. The village is the same size and population, but much of the surrounding farmlands have been developed into neighborhoods, and the area has become less rural; I think it's more of a suburb now than a small town. Their world is certainly less safe, but that has nothing to do specifically with my hometown. Everyone's hometown is less safe, even if you don't think it is.

Most days I wish for the days of innocence (what a cliche) and the days of everybody knowing your name, but the longing is really more about liking the idea of it rather than the actuality of it. Now that I'm an adult and I actually *have* business, I don't like the idea of everyone knowing it. I still live in a suburb, but this one is much larger, in a different state, and I live here as the person *I* know I am, not the person everyone else thinks I am. Or maybe those people are the same?