My Mumbling Thoughts

Mel: “How long have we been driving for?”

Momma: “Twenty minutes.”

Mel: “Are we there yet?”

Traveling with the family is normally not my idea of fun, unless I’m passed out in the back seat asleep. So our ride down to North Carolina was perfect since I was asleep for the entire 5 ½ hour trip. I stuffed Mini’s earphones into my ears, turned the music up loud, and then effortlessly drifted off into my own world.

When we arrived I didn’t even believe that we were in North Carolina. I’ve always associated visiting North Carolina with staying in our house in my old childhood neighborhood. This time though we were in the Queen City amongst tall sky scrapers and manicured flower beds. It just felt like we were in a different part of Virginia.

After we dropped everything off in our hotel room we hopped back into the car and picked up some KFC for dinner. We were going over to Janice’s house to hang out with her for a bit.

As we drove around on all of the familiar street names I noticed how everything was the same, but different and brand new at the same time. My stomach also began to growl with hunger whenever I’d see a Bojangles or Hardee’s. We don’t have any of those in Virginia, and it had been so long since I last had one of their gravy biscuits. It used to be a tradition of mine and Tim’s whenever we would work on Saturday mornings at Jersey Mike’s. We would leave a little early and meet at Bojangles for breakfast.

We continued to drive farther into the small towns of Belmont, Dallas and Gastonia. I forgot that there was about every single kind of Church of God on every corner and the fish camps were already packed full to the max. Tiny mill houses lined both sides of the road and I saw a lot of people who were sitting out on their front porches catching the wind and trying to find some kind of relief in the hot temperatures.

It was strange to see and I felt something strange inside of me. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but something was off.

Momma turned down onto Janice’s small road that leads down to her and George’s house in the woods. Mel and I reminded her to go slow and keep an eye out for all of her outdoor cats. We’d hate for her to run over one and we know that Janice would have a fit if something happened to one of them.

I stepped out of the car, took a deep breath in and it was like we had never left. I felt the humidity hug around me and smacked a mosquito that had already landed on my arm. It was unusually hot for this time of year.

I walked up the squeaky porch steps and opened the screen door. There was Janice sitting at the dining room table, working on a crossword puzzle.

Janice: “Hey y’all.”

Me: “Hey Janice. How are you?” I walked up to her, sat my bag of food onto the table and gave her a hug.

Janice: “Oh, I’m doin’ alright. Go get them paper plates over there and we’ll start eating.”

No time at all had passed. I can’t even count the number of times we’ve been over to Janice’s house for dinner, but it’s the same every single time. We all sit at the same place around the table, we cover the same subjects (politicians, illegal immigrants, gas prices and the taxes on land) and after we’re finished eating and cleaning the kitchen, we watch television until its late and time for us to go.

Some routines just never get old.

After the sun went down, we were all watching TV when Mel and I noticed something on the front porch.

Me: “Um, Janice, what is that out there?”

Janice: “Oh, it’s just a raccoon. They come up there at night and eat the cat’s leftover food. Give it a little longer; there should be a couple more.”

Me: “I swear, every time we come down here you have a different critter that we see.”

Momma: “George, I thought you were taking care of those raccoons. What happened to your traps that you’d set out?”

George: “Can’t no more, the cats might get in them. I got tired of burying them too.”

Janice: “He was getting a lot of them. I remember last year he killed at least a dozen.”

Mel: “Well raccoons are cuter than them opossums we saw last time. That little thing was ugly.”

**

The next day was another blazing hot day. Momma came back by the hotel to pick us up for dinner after her and Janice had finished their shopping, and they decided that we could pick up some food from Big Man’s Fish Camp for dinner. Mel and I decided that we could drive around town for a bit before we picked up dinner and see what had changed since we had been gone.

So we did.

I saw my old high school, the neighborhood that my friend and I had got lost in when we had skipped school one day and saw our old house. I drove down roads that I could have driven with my eyes closed at one point in time but was finding it difficult to remember certain turns now.

I was expecting a melancholy feeling, some sadness, or the weepy feelings while all of the memories from back then swarmed inside of my body, but there wasn’t anything. They were just buildings, just roads, just houses. I didn’t feel the same kind of attachment that I had once felt years ago.

After we were done riding around our small town Mel and I stopped by and picked up the food for dinner.

Mel: “That girl who was in there was really weird. She asked me, ‘you’re not from around here are you?’ I told her, ‘well I used to be. Not anymore.’ She said, ‘so where you do live now?’ I told her we lived near Washington DC and she said, ‘really? What’s there?’ I couldn’t believe that!”

Mel continued going on about small town life with small town people but all I could think was that it had finally happened. We were outsiders and locals could now tell just by looking at us that we didn’t belong there. I never thought the day would have come, nor did I really want it to come.

I’ve always prided myself in being the small town girl who broke away (not really by choice) to live in a city but never forgot where she came from. I never wanted to be one of those stuck up snobs who looked down on those who never did leave the small town. I love it and wouldn’t want it any other way, but having that girl say that we weren’t from around here, knowing automatically that we were from out of town, was something that I didn’t expect to happen and it rubbed me the wrong way.

I suppose its okay at the same time though. It’s so easy to get caught up in small town life, with the slow pace and simple ways. It’s comforting to have those places where you can walk into a store or restaurant and know over half of the people’s names or know that no matter how many new businesses come into town some things will stand forever. After a while though you lose track of time and before you know it, seven years have passed and you don’t know where it all went.

I realize now that some folks are happy to stay planted in one place for their entire life. It’s not wrong, it’s not right, it just is. Perhaps that’s all they want is to stay in their small part of the world that they have carved out for themselves. And then there are others who weren’t meant to stay put in one place for their entire life. They were meant to roam all over the place, carrying with them bits and pieces of a past that taught them no matter how big the cities get or how fancy the clothes are, you can always go back to your small town for a visit and remember that there’s more to life than the fast lane.