You hear people talking about places being “stuck in time” or towns that “time forgot” almost as much as you hear them plotting their “escape” from the community where they were born, desperate to find something different, better, more exciting. I wasn’t immune to that desire to see what life resembled outside of my small-ish, Southern hometown. I needed to know how the pictures I’d seen and descriptions I read stacked up to the real deal. Still, I never felt trapped in the place my roots grew deep. Returning now, after nearly five years, to the town both my husband and I call home, has been a daily rediscovery of what made me who I am.
Each morning before daylight Best and I start our drive down the long, straight road that leads us from the house to the nearest state park. Wide open spaces line both sides of this road; some occupied by cattle and donkeys, others by nothing at all. Dotted in no particular order are homes ranging from modest trailers and OG farm houses to newer, somewhat larger dwellings. Now that the weather has turned mostly warm, I like to ride with the windows down, mirroring Best’s snuffling as we pass scents of dandelion, juniper, and dew-coated grass. Inextricable from these aromas is the base note of rich red dirt.
That same fragrant earth is what covers Best’s feet and belly at the end of our hour-long forest excursion after he’s exhausted himself menacing the squirrels and loping through the woods pretending to be a long-lost cousin of Yellowstone’s O-Six alpha wolf. By this time of the morning, daylight provides a visual confirmation on our return trip of what our noses told us we passed an hour earlier. I like to drive home slower so I can count new calves in the pastures and American flags in displayed in yards. There is a comforting consistency about the people and the lives they’ve built— sometimes generations of lives—in this community. The same mobile home that has occupied a small, manicured lot for well over twenty years has a sturdy wooden porch built onto the front that is surrounded by daffodils and hydrangeas. Several mornings I’ve passed as an elderly woman in a pressed housedress stands on her porch and throws up a hand in greeting. I have no doubt that if I stopped to chat, I’d likely leave with gifts of fresh eggs collected that morning and hydrangea cuttings for my own garden.
I’m confident that if I told my neighbors that their town is frozen in time, they’d reply with a hearty, “And thank goodness for that!” There might be a noticeable lack of Trader Joe’s and hot yoga studios in these parts, but what there’s an abundance of are churches where patched overalls are perfectly acceptable attire, pride in working hard, and a belief that getting a little dirty every day helps remind us of our connection and debt to the natural world.
Time may have forgotten a lot of gravel roads in my hometown, but oh what a lovely feeling to know that so many of the residents have children (grandchildren, or great-grandchildren) who still drink from the hose pipe during the summer time, wear shoes only when they must, and marvel at how the handful of daffodils they planted in 1977 have now filled their back yards. Whole Foods has nothing on the Quick Stop where you can fill up your tank, buy a bag of boiled peanuts, and find out who’s on the prayer list at church this week. And that’s just how I like it.
PartWolf 