Over the past couple of days I have been enjoying being engaged with the Facebook group from my old hometown. It’s fun to remember the buildings, the people and the places of the years that I spent growing up. It wasn’t heaven, but it was a place where I was part of a whole cloth. I belonged whether I wanted to belong or not.
However, in September of my 18th year I headed out to Michigan to follow my desire for college education. I think when I left my little farm town I fully anticipated that I would return home at the end of my studies. For all my braggadocio about wanting to go out into the world I was still nervous and cautious. I figured the fallback for me would be to go home and find some work there. I think most of the people I knew thought I would end up back in Jersey.
Things and events dictated otherwise. Most of the work where I grew up was tied to factory or farm. I was scrawny and weak and myopic. None of these traits are really suitable for the kind of work available in my hometown and it’s in environs. There really wan’t much for a college educated liberal arts type. Plus, I had too much history defining who I could and couldn’t be in that place. Once I left it was pretty much for good whether I knew it or not.
I have lived in the Midwest for 43 of the last 45 years. I did try and go home for about 2 years. It really wasn’t an apt fit for me. Bit by bit, month by month and year by year my home had shifted. Over time I had become rooted in the snow and the four seasons of the north country.
I think we Americans are basically a restless bunch. For the most part pretty much everyone I’ve ever known has wanted move, has wanted to travel, has wanted to go somewhere. Some of us have abject wanderlust. Some just have a small itch for change of scenery now and then. At the most the Jersey shore is no more that 65 miles from where you are in the Garden State. Sometimes that drive is enough.
It was good to have a very defined home when I was young but I still have that desire to go traveling further. I think I used up all the home Michigan has to offer me. In eight months I am going to be on the go again.
Still no matter where I go the dust of Pedricktown, NJ will be part of the aromas of my memory. Memories of the smell of the reeds and plants along the causeway leaving town going north will come back to me with the coming of summer. The sounds of a small town will probably be some of the last things I remember. Remembering one man whistling and singing as he pumped gas and cleaned car windshields will forever echo in my mind.
Home is a fragile construct. I was lucky.
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