I've lived in 9 cities and towns in my life. Lived in 6 different houses, 4 apartments, and 4 dorm rooms. On top of that there are several cities and a number of houses that my various friends and family members have lived in over the course of my life that have felt like my homes away from home. And yet whenever I'm feeling really deeply nostalgic, it's always for the same place. And I'm pretty sure that that one place is the only place I've ever truly despised.
Or at least I thought I did at the time. Because damn do I miss it sometimes. While I was there I would've said that the only thing I liked was the house. And I do miss the house. I miss my bedroom, the random room next to my bedroom, the kitchen, the dining room, the laundry room, the yard, the garage. I even miss my closet. I haven't officially lived there for 9 years, and it's possible I can describe that house better than the one I live in now. But it's not just about the house.
I miss the depressing nursing home across the street. I miss the weird park back behind the house where there might have always been fire ant piles and dog poop in the grass. But it was the best place to watch the thunderstorms roll in. And the old high school that had been turned into a museum loomed over the park like something out of a horror movie. A crappy horror movie, but still. I miss the train tracks nearby and the trains that would rattle the windows in my room and would sound their horns every few seconds for 5 minutes at least once an hour all night long. I miss the little, tiny library on the random side street off the loop that I probably only went to four times. I miss the "downtown" with the package store, the bizarre and pretty unhelpful general store, and a whole lot of boarded up, possibly condemned, buildings.
I miss the three mediocre mexican food restaurants that my family rotated through every couple of weeks. I miss the Movie Gallery in the grocery store strip mall, with the warped and practically unplayable VHS copy of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. And the Whataburger in the parking lot in front of the Movie Gallery. I miss the weird mall with nothing in it but a Dollar Store and an Army recruiting office, and there may have been a JCPenneys, but not one anyone would ever want to go in. And the movie theater on the opposite side of town, a full 3 1/2 minutes away, with the coyotes in the parking lot. And the gas station with the tanning beds. And the vet's office that always had random animals like wolves and hedgehogs in the waiting room. I miss the goddam Walmart Supercenter. And the fucking dogwood trees.
I miss the one classic rock radio station.
And I miss the drive to school. Possibly the worst thing ever while I was there, and I'm pretty sure I miss it the most. Ten minutes from my house to the town that, in my mind, consisted of nothing but one old gutted Victorian house with a double wide and a barn in the front yard. I think another few until the place where the old man pulled out of his driveway and hit an oncoming car and killed the woman and child inside. Another few minutes to the house that was just a shack with a landfills worth of junk in the yard. And a few more to the town with the one stoplight and a Dairy Queen and some sort of mini-mart that was possibly named after Superman's father. And then the road was four lanes instead of two, and there were farms on either side, with cows and the huge round bales of hay. And there was the place that used to be a Dairy Queen, but had become independently owned. They served Dairy Queen food and the sign had words like "chicken" and "burgers" and possibly "catfish", but no distinguishable restaurant name. I can't remember any more if that place came before or after the county line, but now that I've put it before I'm feeling like maybe it was after. And at the county line there were the giant liquor stores with the drive-thru windows. And at certain times of year that area always smelled like skunk. And then there was the bridge over the man made lake where the bugs were so thick at night that it sounded like rain on the windshield. And a little past that were the farm stands that only sold vidalia onions. Then the grocery store with the attached gas station and the cheapest gas I've ever seen and probably ever will ($0.79 a gallon). And then the loop, with the place on the corner that sold a bunch of different types of stone. And then the school, which I don't quite miss with the fervor that I miss the rest of it all.
And I feel like somewhere along that route there was a church that had previously been a grocery store, but that may have been on a different road. Possibly the road that had the house with the dead chickens hanging from clotheslines in the front yard. I miss that road too, but not quite so much.
I'm not sure why I needed to write all of this down. I don't know if those are the kinds of things I'll tell my kids about my childhood, or the things I'll reminisce about when I'm really old. I'm not even sure if I ever want to go back to that place, because surely some of those things won't be there any more and I'll be disappointed. But now I think I'll go listen to Pink Floyd's The Wall...and the soundtrack to Can't Hardly Wait...and possibly some Ben Folds' Five. Maybe I'll text my sister to say Hi.
