It’s a place I’ve never been in person, but I visit in my
mind endlessly.
Whenever I think about him telling
me not to run in the house or asking him how my math grades were, or giving me
Bazooka bubble gum, I go there. I walk the streets that he walked as a kid, as a
teenager. Barefoot just as he might’ve, at least in the summer, for his family
had barely enough money to stay fed on.
I see the sights; tall blue grass,
specked with modest homes surrounded by just enough chicken wire fence to let
your neighbors know where your property ended, and theirs began. Not fence enough to stop you from being
neighbors, knowing each other’s families, or that would halt them from coming
over and asking you eye-to-eye for help if that’s what they needed.
Then, invariably I try to imagine
why he left. Supposedly, with only $60 in his pocket and a vague notion that
there would be some type of job in the neighboring state to the north, he set
out. Leaving his family, friends and acquaintances behind.
Most say it was because of his
father. A stern, unforgiving man, who thought his teenage son Wales was no
better than the muck that was cleaned from the horse stalls each morning.
Sadly, no one’s around any longer that knows the straight truth.
Nevertheless, north he went, and a
job he did find. Not just any job. This kid from the holler- my papaw- had a knack for numbers,
geometry, and even physics. When he signed up for the Air Force, he tested
through the roof, passing all the perceived limitations his father had wrongly
cast upon him.
Growing up I had never even heard of
or seen my granddad’s dad. It wasn’t until I was well into adulthood that I
found out that my grandfather’s father had attempted twice to come visit him.
Now I can’t be sure of how those meetings went. But I’d like to think that whatever
argument had fissured their relationship was one that neither man, due to their
simplest of emotions, could quite figure out how to resolve. My grandpa would no
doubt be sitting there, staring across the same table that I had eaten Christmas
dinner at innumerable times. He’d be looking into the aged face of his father, a
greyed and silvered man who was well into his eighth or ninth decade of life. The only thing he was seeing however was the man
who some forty years previous had attempted to motivate him in some bizarre way,
but had only succeeded in alienating his son.
It’s at this moment that I think, my
grandpa’s thoughts traveled back in time. He, much like I do, saw his hometown.
For him it was a mixture of both fantasy and memory. I make believe it was a fond
recollection. Though because of the negative weight that hung on my grandfather
in relation to his own father, it would be the only way my granddad would allow
himself to ever see his hometown again.
There are several reasons why I want
to walk where my grandpa walked; to satisfy my own curiosity, because he wouldn’t
allow himself- among others. However, at the forefront I will walk the streets of
where my grandpa grew up, because he no longer can.
