It Turns Out You Can Go Home Again

You've heard the old adage and so have I. 'You can't go home again'.

Well, recently I challenged that old saying, and truth be told, I kind of think I won. I didn't exactly go home again to the days I lived there, but it was close.

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My daughter Jessie came up for a visit with her three kids (shown above with some old skinny bald guy...handsome though!). We decided to take a trip to my old stomping grounds, the place(s) I haunted as a-growin' up person.

So down the Interstate, we went, taking the Magnolia (I played basketball in this town) exit, then on through Kenneth (my folks banked here) and down a gravel road to a farmstead that didn't look too much like it did when I stood a lot smaller. But yes, this was it, the little farmyard where you're Great Grandpa and Great Grandma raised the little fella that grew up (kind of) to be your Grandpa. The barn is gone but it stood there, and the hog house is gone but it stood over there.

A trip into Leota and there's the little 2-room school (at least the building) I went through 6th grade, there's the cafe, and a lot of 'such and such (the barbershop) used to be here and such and such (the Gambles store) used to be there'.

We took a trip to the park where we snapped the picture above, and maybe that's where I realized it...maybe several things, several places, several people who were there a half-century or so ago aren't there, but...they are.

To me they still are, and always will be.

On to Edgerton, past this school and that school, down this street and that street, pointing out this, that and the other thing. I didn't tell them everything I did (maybe someday, maybe not) but thankfully I didn't hear a lot of boredom sighs'. I'm pretty sure it wasn't quite as exciting for them to hear as it was for me telling. But hopefully, they maybe got a little of the family history to stick.

When you meander back to the old places a lot of things are different but a lot of things are the same. I felt the very same warmth I did back when I was knee-high to a bug's butt and lived there. I don't think I appreciated it as much then as I do now. And I hope I passed along a little of that appreciation to my Grandkids.

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