Took a casual road trip this afternoon.............As the old saying goes...You Cant Go Home Again. I think it was written by Thomas Jefferson in the script for the movie Gone With The Wind. O. K. maybe not....... But my drive ended up in my home town of Salem, S. D., I did go back and at the time I was there I was sorry that I did..................As I drove around each and every street in our small town of about 1200 people there is only one major business open that was there when I was a kid.......McCormick Motors, some of the insurance agencies have similar names but different owners........... I drove by where Karen Peterson used to live when I walked her home from school as a freshman...............also drove by where my ex wife used to live.......that house is gone. Also gone are so many of the places where my CITY kid friends lived, some are still there and occupied, some are boarded up. My old High School is there and has been remodeled, but I heard that it is closing and a new one will be built...........Our graduation picture used to hang in the center of the hallway over the lockers............Now there are 51 more that have been hung since we left.......what happened to us? Did I Rip Van Winkle it for lots of years?............Wow. As I drove through downtown I saw a familiar notice............ATTEND 4H ACHIEVEMENT DAYS..........I drove by the old area at the Highway Department Headquarters where it was held. Nothing, then I remembered it was moved out by the old baseball diamond.......I drove by the cattle buildings............there were just a few cattle, a few more hogs and about 3 sheep, compared to the hundreds that were shown when I lived there. I walked through the National Guard Armory where they were setting up their exhibits............I remember many, many tables of handicrafts that we made during the previous year, tables of canned goods, tables of scrapbooks, homemade kids toys, dresses, skirts and shirts made out of feed sacks, home grown garden items.........Not a single chicken sight, that was my specialty...........I won several purple ribbons showing my Leghorns.........It takes a special effort to scrub up your chickens feet with a toothbrush before showing them. I still like chickens, mostly fried these days. I thought what a shame, but then reality set in................there are so few kids on the farm now and only a few of the farms feature any kind of livestock. I wandered over to the old baseball diamond, the former rickety wooden grandstand is gone and has been replaced by nifty metal bleachers with a handicapped ramp, which now I find quite handy. I sat there and thought about my old Legion Baseball days.........but that is another story. All of a sudden it dawned on me that there was no Klein Amusement Days carnival it used to cover a whole block of Main Street, I thought back to how thrilling that was. All at once a light went on in my head and I thought back to my only ride ever on a Ferris Wheel. Dad took me when I was about 6 and I hated heights even then, we made 1 1/2 rounds and ended up on the very top as they let someone off at the bottom. As we started to move it jerked to a stop and we were stuck nearly all the way up. Of course I immediately started to cry, Dad said something to the effect that crying would not help. He said make the most out of it.................You and I are the only ones in the whole town that can look down onto the tops of every store in town, even the High School and we can see the ball park from here as I looked around I was impressed here we were about 35 feet off the ground and had this glorious look of the whole town and the little bitty people below, and life was a bit better.....................Earlier I mentioned that I was sorry I went back, but now I remembered that special moment with Dad and all was well again. Thanks for the lesson Dad...........
Posted on: Mon, 04 Aug 2014 23:13:42 +0000
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