Observations on Returning Home

I wrote this in 1994 when I returnd to Princeton, Illinois for my PHS 26th class reunion (yes, for various reasons we skipped our 25th Class reunion). This was written while sittting in the little park next to the Red Covered Bridge. While Princeton has changed even more in the last 26 years than in the first 26, the sentiments are still the same. This was originally published in The Bureau County Republican in the fall of 1994.  I post this now because of a request from Facebook.

  

They say you can't go home again.

Well, I'm back.

Is it the same town?

Is it the same place?

I go for a walk to find out.

I remember events that happened decades ago.

Things I would like to tell my kids.

Things I would never tell my kids.

The Community Center

Is this where twelve year old boys still get their first dance with a girl?

The Apollo Theater

I saw my first James Bond movie when I was fourteen.

The Swedish Cup is gone.

Where do kids try their first marshmallow phosphate?

The Spoon and the Cigar Store are still here.

Someday, anthropologists will study those places.

The old Main Street characters: Kinky, Musty, Clip Clop, and Doug are gone.

I bet there are new ones to take their places. I see a few that qualify.

I walk through my old neighborhood.

No one is playing kick-up and kill.

No one is playing hide-and-go-seek.

No one is climbing the maple tree to count the robin's eggs in the nest.

No one is building a club house.

No one is camping out in the back yard.

No boys are talking to girls on the corner.

No one is learning to drive a stick shift in the church parking lot.

Was the snow really two feet deep on this street back in '68?

Why are the huge lawns that I mowed for a buck-fifty now so small?

I remember the black three-legged cat that lived in the sewer.

I remember the corner grocery store where we got banana Popsicles on hot summer days.

Our house is still there but it is now a different color.

The metal sign I made in junior high shop is still hanging out front

but now has someone else's name on it.

The birch tree I planted is gone but the maple is doing fine, thank you.

The garage that my dad and I built one summer is in need of paint

  

The alley in back doesn't have burn barrels anymore.

The spot where I tried to make gunpowder out of saltpeter, sulphur, and charcoal is still there.

I wonder what Mr. Nelson, the druggist, thought I needed that saltpeter for?

I go to the old high school and walk around it.

The students now have a parking lot.

We walked several miles in deep snow to get to school.

I take a jog around the cinder track without being told to.

I can almost hear the band practicing the fight song.

There are plants and birds I haven't seen in years:

Rhubarb and tiger lilies.

Red winged black birds and cardinals.

Even an occasional Dutch Elm tree.

I get in the car and expand my radius of observation.

Does the town really need a half dozen fast food restaurants and three pizza joints?

If so, why didn't we?

And the antique stores. One even sells toys that I played with as a kid. Hmmmm!

Somebody moved the swimming pool, but it is still full of happy kids.

The Hospital where they yanked my appendix and repaired my wounds caused by childhood impetuousness is still there.

The Custard Corner is gone. Well, the corner is still there.

Much has changed but even more has stayed the same.

The grass is green, and the corn is knee high by the Fourth.

Green apples fall off the trees into the road and smell the same after they are run over.

Nightcrawlers come out of the ground after a rain.

Squirrels scamper up the old maple tree.

Pleasant, Church, and Euclid Streets are still brick.

The canal is prettier than it was thirty years ago.

At dusk there are still fireflies.

It still rains on days you planned to play outside.

And when you try to sit and relax on the banks of Bureau Creek the mosquitoes fly in your ear.

You can go home again because

Part of you never leaves.