Robert and I loved the small town where we grew up, where neighbors and friends were like extended family. That meant if we misbehaved, there was a real chance we would get in trouble twice, but it’s all we knew. We had nothing to compare it with. That’s what put life into the saying, ‘It takes a whole town to raise a child’.
Our childhood summers lasted forever, and we filled them by living our dreams —bikes turned into horses; roller skates gave us wings; we caught crawdads in the creek and played pick up baseball in the Himebaugh Lot. We loved concerts at night on the courthouse lawn.
It’s not like now, when birthdays come every other week and the person in the mirror looks older than the trees more and more every day.
Our town was our whole world and it was huge and safe and innocent and every kid we knew could play until the streetlights came on. Those days, parents didn’t worry where their children were, only about how dirty they would be when the streetlights sent them home.
As we grew older, our lives expanded to include study halls and football games and proms with guys in tuxes and discussing our crush over ice cream at Islays. Our whole world was still huge and safe, but with a difference. We could drive and park and neck, and a curfew replaced the streetlights once our pizza was all gone.
Then it happened —graduation and we moved away. Most for higher education, some for marriage, way too many to a place called Vietnam. Some came home to raise a new generation, some we only saw at reunions, and way too many never came home at all. Their names are on a marble wall in DC …
Fifty years later, a chance reunion brought Robert and me together. We grew up two blocks apart when our world was so large. Back then, we never knew. Now when we visit our hometown, we’re awed. That world looks smaller now and it might not be as safe, but our memories will always stay huge.
We were safe and secure and happy and the streetlights sent us home …