As I sat waiting for her to arrive I contemplated the oddness of my situation. In my hometown for the first time in 10 years. In the house one of my best friends grew up in, but alone. Moments away from seeing someone I had neither seen nor spoken to in years. The first girl I’d ever loved. Whatever that means. The first girl I ever had “that feeling” for. The one where she’s the first thing on your mind when you wake up in the morning and the last thing you think about before you sleep. If you can sleep.
We grew up together but this feeling didn’t occur until Junior year of high school. Tracy. My first SERIOUS crush. It lasted maybe four years (I know!). Definitely three. It was awful. It was a long time ago and I don’t still feel it but if I’m describing what it was, it was awful. Every song, movie, TV show, commercial, etc. reminded me of her. And reminded me I’d never be with her.
After three years, during the summer after our first year of college, I finally found the testicular fortitude to tell her. I was transferred to rejection city (population: me) and spent the ensuing year trying to still be her friend before moving to Ft. Worth, Texas and starting a new life. It’d be ten years before I heard from her again.
In June of 2011 she texted me completely out of the blue to wish me a happy birthday. It caught me completely off guard but I was happy to hear from her. We began texting regularly. Occasionally scratching the surface of whatever had happened between us but usually just saying hello and day to day stuff like that. She teaches in a town near where we grew up, so when I decided to go back I let her know that I’d need a tour guide for my return tour. She said she might know someone who could help.
…She was referring to herself. You got that right? …Yeah. Moving on.
So there I sat. Waiting for my first love and first heartbreak to arrive after ten years. When she did, it was another in a series of surreal moments that weekend. I actually saw her walk past the front window, so I technically got to see her first. She knocked. I answered. It was…awkward. Not in a terrible way. I didn’t regret it. Just in an “okay, what now?” way.
The idea was that I wanted to check out the town. To see how it’d changed and how it hadn’t but somehow she ended up coming in. Had I invited her? It was all kind of a blur. In fact the entire afternoon was a blur. We sat and talked for a bit. About what, I honestly don’t know. The only thing I remember is that she said she’d been nervous to see me. I said that I was nervous about it too, but everything about being back in that town had me kind of on edge. We decided to start walking.
We left the house and began walking down the empty street. The afternoon sky was grey with clouds but the sun was managing to find it’s way through occasionally. It was warm for mid-November. She was wearing a chíc black coat, a large colorful scarf tucked inside the high collar of the coat, and large aviator-like sunglasses tinted in an almost brandy hue. It struck me as very Jackie O but I didn’t say so. She looked amazing. Especially for having already squeezed out a couple of puppies. One less than a year before. As we made our way, with no great urgency, to our first destination I thought about all the times we’d done this very thing when we were kids. Walking around town. Smoking cigarettes. Talking. Laughing. I loved just being with her then. This was nice too.
Going into this thing, I knew I wanted to see the school I graduated from and the house I grew up in. As we entered the parking lot behind the school it struck me again how short a trip it was from Ben’s house. Not surprisingly I remembered it being longer. That’s what she said! What?! Anyway, we crossed the parking lot to the football field. At least what I remembered as being the football field. Now it was an entire sports complex. A couple tennis courts along with four or five baseball diamonds stretched out over an area behind the school I remember only as corn fields. Or wheat fields(Some kind of fields. I grew up in town. I don’t do crops). It was impressive. When I was a kid we had one actual baseball diamond with a mini-diamond on the other side of it. The two basically shared an outfield. I once did some Chippendales-style laps around those fields. Maybe you read about it?
As we approached the football field I saw for the first time that the running track that circled the field had been revamped. I’m my day, it was made essentially out of rust colored gravel. I don’t think our school hosted very many track meets back then. That had been completely paved over in black tar and decorated with various colorful markings (for track event purposes I presume) including a nice-looking JAGUARS emblem stenciled in right in front of the bleachers, which were also new and improved. It looked beautiful. It did not even resemble the field I used to spend Friday nights around, being a dumb kid with my friends while the high schoolers played football. We did a lap around the track, walked by the school, and left. I would’ve loved to go in to look around but I assumed it’d be locked up for the weekend. Had I been alone I probably would’ve at least tried the doors but Tracy and I were talking, and I was excited to see the old house, so before I knew it we were on our way there.
Since my parents sold the house in 2002, we’d heard it’d passed through many hands, being bought and sold and bought and sold again. I think the last I’d heard it’d been foreclosed on and was once again vacant. I hoped that was still the case. I figured if nobody lived there’d I’d be comfortable going in for a close look. Maybe even see if I could find a way inside.
Walking down my old street to my old house with my old friend was a unique experience that I’ll certainly never get to experience again. Seeing all of the neighboring houses was almost as exciting as seeing my own. So much so that I hadn’t even seen the large van in my old driveway nor all of the children’s toys strewn about the yard. Someone was indeed living there. A family it seemed. I was disappointed but maybe seeing it cold and vacant would’ve been worse. Except for a small porch added on to the side door off the kitchen and a different set of garage doors the place looked exactly the same. The front porch light next to the door was inexplicably on in the middle of the afternoon. It made me think of all the times I’d come home after playing ball ’til dark or after football games or school dances or whatever and I’d see the porch light all the way down the street. The worn out old basketball hoop that my dad put up in like ’86 was still there.
Tracy suggested we knock and do the old ” I used to live here, mind if I look around?” thing. I said no. It was my first thought when I saw someone was living there and I knew right away I wouldn’t do it. I know if I was put in that position as the owner I’d be uncomfortable and that would make me very uncomfortable as the tourist. Too uncomfortable to enjoy it. I was already feeling awkward just standing here staring at someone’s house. No longer mine. So on we walked.
Having made it to both of my prime destinations already, I was paying less attention to where we were going. We headed uptown, which was less than a block away and that’s the one that didn’t feel like it used to be farther away. Uptown was always that close.
We stopped in at the gas station (not “Pete’s”. Different one) ’cause we both had to tinkle. Crossed the highway and walked up Main Street (technically speaking). Circled around, crossed back over the highway, and headed back to Ben’s house. We chatted for another half hour or so after we got there and then she had to go.
That was quite an afternoon. It was interesting because as I was experiencing my old home town for the first time in so long I was also trying to fit ten years of catching up and reminiscing with my friend into a 2-3 hour window. I felt like I wasn’t able to give either one as much attention and interest as I wanted. It was really cool to see Tracy and I really enjoyed seeing the old sights but experiencing both at the same time made it impossible to be completely invested in either one. I wished I had more time to catch up with her and I didn’t quite get that feeling I’d been expecting from exploring the town. But it was only Saturday…
It was around 4 pm when I was alone again. I found two new messages on my phone. Ben had texted to tell me they’d be home around six. Plans had been made for that night to meet up with a couple of old high school friends who are now married and living in the area but their son had gotten sick so plans were cancelled. “We’ll probably pick up some beer and pizza and hang out at the house,” the text concluded. Sounded good to me.
The second message was from Johanna. She’d texted me to tell me she’d finished writing one of her papers for school and wondered if I maybe had time to read it over and give a critique. There I was alone with nothing planned until my friends returned. I did have time. She e-mailed what she’d written and through a series of texts and brief phone calls I helped her put together a pretty solid paper. In fact her teacher asked if she could keep it on file and use it as an example of what she wanted for future classes. Okay that was mostly Johanna’s work, but I was happy to help.
It was a little after six when Ben and Beth got back. It had been a long day for both of them. He’d been up before dawn to hunt and she’d been up early with Audrey. Add four hours round trip in the car and it was understandable they were dragging a bit. We scarfed some pizza and cracked open a few beers. I, of course, had brought my Blu-Ray copy of the Pearl Jam documentary because I thought Ben would enjoy it. Once Audrey was successfully put to bed I grabbed it so we could watch it. Unfortunately being on the cutting edge of home movie viewing technology isn’t a top priority in the life of Ben’s dad. My Blu-Ray wouldn’t play in his DVD player. I was disappointed but if you can’t go Blu-Ray, go VHS. Die Hard(!) on VHS! the greatest action movie ever and Ben and I’s shared favorite movie of all time! Beautiful! This is great!
And it was great. For about an hour and a half. It was around that mark that I looked over and saw Ben’s head, chin resting on his palm, drooping and nearly falling. I woke him up and suggested we call it a day. He grunted inaudibly and turned the TV off. I said goodnight and went to my room. It was around 11 pm and I was still awake (benefits of sleeping in ’til like 11 am that morning) so I texted Johanna to see what she was doing. To my complete lack of surprise she was relaxing with a mini Law & Order marathon on instant Netflix. I tried to take advantage of technology by suggesting we watch an episode together. Her at home and me two hours away via the Netflix app on my phone. It was a fun idea but didn’t work out logistically. We kept trying to comment on what we were watching through texting but I had to stop the episode on my end to text or read hers so… Long story short it was almost really cool. We said goodnight and I went to sleep.
When I woke up Sunday morning I knew immediately that I was going to go back out and check out the town the way I meant to when I decided to go in the first place. Due to the pleasant distraction of my female companion the previous day I’d been unable to completely immerse myself in it. To really stop and think about what it meant to be there. It was almost time to head back to the big city, but were weren’t leaving until the afternoon. I got up, showered, and hit the road around 10 am.
First stop: the gas station formerly known as Pete’s where I picked up a bottle of milk, a couple terribly unpleasant cellophane-wrapped pastries, and a copy of the hometown newspaper, The Observer.
I made my way once again to the high school as I choked down those god-awful “pastries”. I was chugging the last of the milk when I came upon a pumpkin that had been smashed in the road. I was almost to the school again and I could just imagine the group of 2011 version BBE High kids with nothing better to do on a Saturday night than having a few beers and smashing a few pumpkins. I don’t think I ever did that myself but thinking about it felt distinctly like home. Now I was walking across the school parking lot again.
I went to the football field and as I looked around I thought about all the time I’d spent there and at the school and in this town. Finally I was feeling what I expected to feel. From that point on I felt overwhelmed. Thinking about all of the kids that grew up there before me and how they experienced many of the same things in mostly the same places. Thinking about all of the kids who have been there since I left that experienced the same things in the same places. It’s humbling. To realize you were just a teeny-tiny part in the monster machinery that is the town. Even such a small town, which despite it’s meager proportions has been churning out class after class after class of kids. But what really struck me was that the make up of the school board, faculty and local business scene, the cornerstones of the small community, had greatly changed. All of the names and faces that represented stability and structure to me as a child were for the most part new and different names and faces. Yet the town seemed basically the same. It’s a comforting yet baffling feeling. I walked to the middle of the football field and called my parents. When my dad answered I said “you’ll never guess where I am right now.” I spoke with him and mom for about ten minutes. It was my absolute favorite part of the weekend. It felt like we were all home together for the first time in ten years, if only for ten minutes.
When I left the school area, I went by the old house again. Then I strolled back uptown, all the while taking pictures and just kind of looking around in awe. I joked with Ben and Beth later that there’d probably be a blurb in The Observer the next week about someone spotting a vagrant stranger wondering around town staring at buildings and taking pictures.
I spent another two-plus hours wandering around seeing the sights that morning. It was so much fun. Exactly what I was hoping for. Now that it’s been a couple months the urgency of that connection I felt has faded some. Writing about it has brought it back in bits and pieces. But Johanna has never been there, so I’m already looking forward to taking her there and experiencing it through her eyes. I can’t wait!
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