HOME TOWN (?)

   Ten days ago I was briefly back in the town where I lived from ages 4-16.  Except it was not the same town.  Proximity to the state's capital, the Research Triangle Park, several universities, along with burgeoning population growth has transformed this once 'small town USA' into something barely recognizable from 'once upon a time'.

    Nor was this my initial encounter with the changed landscape.  Almost thirty years ago, I wrote an essay for the local newspaper noting some of the differences.  I came across the article yesterday while searching for another item.  Re-reading it so soon after the most recent visit highlighted how many of the 'changes' have themselves been 'changed'.  Even so, I still resonated with many of the earlier observations.  What follows is an abridgment  of the 1985 article:

   "My boyhood friend Charlie is shutting down --or closing up.
Regardless of the directionality, the result is the same.  Victim of too many work hours, too many people who will not pay their bills, the proliferation of discount chain department stores that are called 
'drug stores', and the nation-wide growing distress of 'downtown', he's turning the key for the last time at the end of December. . . .

    [His] drugstore is the current version of a long-time locally-owned pharmacy on [the town's] main street, kind of a basic ingredient to the town for a long time. . . . Changes have come relatively slowly to [the town]. (The pace has definitely accelerated in the years since I wrote that last sentence.)  I remember the service station philosophers . . .of the '40's and '50's saying that 'the only way this town is going to grow is for there to be a few funerals', meaning apparently the deaths of those who controlled the real estate.  Never did they specify the obstructionists.  Still, there are today some surface changes --one wonders about the less visible changes of the heart of a small town. . . .
     Personally I am still a little jangled every time I see a swimming pool where our house once set, just a block down the street from where Charlie lived when we were kids. . . .

    Recently, when passing through town, I thought I would indulge my nostalgia and ask the principal of the middle school (which had been the old District School, not high school) [a new high school had been built on the edge of town.] if I might wander the halls and the campus.  Have you ever tried to kiss a ghost?  Gone!  Never again can we see the blackboard where Miss Linda Newton made us stand until we had figured the answer to the algebra problem or sit in the auditorium where the Sauline Players annually brought dramatic culture and couth to the provinces.

    First the house and now the school.  At least the Methodist Church was still standing.  For years Phil Tillerson, my brother Dennis and I were the only guys there, all our friends went to the immersin' church up the street.  Now that Baptist Church which in my boyish eyes had been about twice the size of the Vatican will soon give way to a more aesthetic and functional building.

   Will nothing stay the same?  But who wants to stand in the way of 'progress'?

    But anyway, back to Charlie and those less-visible changes of the heart.  I have never liked stores that want to see a drivers license, two other forms of I.D., my birth certificate, take my picture, make a thumb print and a voice print every time I pay for my purchase by check.  As a matter of fact, I avoid those places whenever possible.  Maybe I am an incurable romantic and out of step with the modern era, but I still appreciate a merchant or clerk's recognizing me and not wanting to see my life's credit history every time we have a commercial transaction.

   Someone once characterized Southerners as being a 'people of place'.  A predictable place surrounded by known and caring faces provided a sense of stability for lots of us during our formative years when we were trying to figure out who we were  and what life was all about.  As we became older we began realizing that the real world is never as cozy as it seemed during that brief time and that the way to survive mentally, spiritually, emotionally, and 
probably physically, is to make peace with the fact that life, ultimately, can't be controlled.  An ancient Greek philosopher observed that we "cannot step  twice into the same river."

    Even so, I think we are all diminished whenever the personal, human touch gets bowled over by 'progress' and that's why I am saddened by Charlie's closing and come January another [town] institution will be gone. "

     Satchel