Black Creek

  I've been thinking of "home" in recent times. I've traveled a lot in my later years. Honolulu, (beautiful place) Colorado Springs (to cold for my southern blood, but my son was born there) Tuscaloosa, Alabama (it's Alabama, it's southern, I live and work here but it's not "home." ) 

Where is home? Where you are born? Where you grew up? Where you got your first kiss or your first crush? In that case it would be Gadsden, Alabama and more specifically Walnut Park in Gadsden for me. Where you remember family and going to church and ball games? Attalla, Alabama and Altoona, Alabama for me. Still it's all in Etowah County. But, I've thought about home recently. It's Sunday afternoon and I was on the "Welcome to Gadsden" facebook page. Looking at pictures of Black Creek and Nocculula Falls. I should have known. Throw an old county slow dance song on the old stero on Stonewall Avenue and let me head out the door because my mother will start singing along with Loretta Lynn any minute now. ;-)

I was talking with a friend several years ago. He is from Gadsden but not from Alabama City. He said the people  from that area and especially from Walnut Park talk about it with fondness. A fondness that seems a little more intense than the way some people talk about the old neighborhoods they grew up in. But, all of us remember the days of our childhood no matter where we grew up. I have some good memories of Altoona, Alabama too. I remember going up to Prince's Drug Store (soda fountain, tables and chairs, classic) and looking at comic books and going next door and getting an ice cream cone and heading back to my grandparents house to eat my ice cream and read my comic book.

We lived all over Walnut Park. I remember taking my wife and touring the old neighborhood before we got married. We started on Chester Street. I said I lived there and right next door and my grandparents  lived there and right across the street. Then we headed on up to the corner of Chester and Stonewall and I said I lived right there. My best and oldest friends lived right over there where we just passed. Their neighbors that we played with lived right there. We headed down Stonewall and I said I lived there and then there. Wow, she said. You lived all over this neighborhood.

My stepdads parents lived on Webster Street. I walked to school sometime because back then walking to Walnut Park Elementary was not a big deal. My friend tells the story of getting sick at school one day. They let him walk home because he didn't feel well. No endless forms or phone calls or even worries. Just "go home." Much different time and place.

Black Creek: We lived on the Alabama City or Emma Sansom side of Black Creek. The snooty Gadsden folks lived on the other side. ;-) I transfered to West End my sophomore year and graduated in 1976. I missed a lot of the old classmates that went on and graduated from Sansom. But, I also met a lot of cool people at West End. Like I said it's all home to me now all these years later.

I am just in one of those nostalgic moods today. I think about the people that I've known and the people that have gone on and the people that I miss. I used to read more fiction than non fiction but I don't read as much these days. I still read non fiction and will on occasion pick up a novel. I remember something Dean Koontz wrote for one of his characters. He wrote "The only way back is to go forward." Something along those lines it's not a perfect quote. But, it has stuck with me and I like the idea. Why?

Well, because maybe, just maybe this isn't the destination. Life is part of the journey and the ties and relationships and apparent coincidences of life are part of a larger picture. Maybe somewhere there is another version of home. A brighter, truer version. Maybe, just maybe we really do come from afar trailing clouds of glory. Maybe it is just one eternal moment.

So, I'll keep going forward. I'll look in the mirror and think "wow, where did those lines come from?" I'll look at my hands and be startled that they no longer look like the hands of a nineteen year old or a twenty five year old. I'll talk to my mother while I can on the phone and "see" the firey, tempermental brunette woman that sang country music and could bust ya one if you messed with her. Until, I go back up to Gadsden and see the greyed haired aged old lady that still sounds like her but certainly doesn't look like her. I try to remember that when I talk with her on the phone and she says something that sets off the old mother-child conflict alarm. :-) I find these days it's easier to forgive and love than to be mad and self righteous.

Some people say that there are multiple universes. I don't know that I believe that but I think about it. I went ahead and graduated from Sansom in one of those and my mother stayed with my step dad in Walnut Park, On the other hand the car that hit me when I was five had to have killed me in at least one of those universes and missed me  completely in another. Ouch, makes the ole noggin hurt to think about it.

I haven't always done my best. I have tried to do my best when I really believed in something though. I haven't hated and I've tried and still try to treat others the way I want to be treated. I'm not in a hurry but I honestly do look to a river and a more real home. Peace
Steve

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah...Leonard Cohen