Memories….. old and new and old again.

After all our trials and tribulations in Austin these past three weeks or so, we finally left last Friday and are heading to New England. First stop though… my old home town of Ada, Oklahoma. Ada is a small town of about 15,000 people in the southeastern part of the state. These days, every time I get within a hoot and a holler of the place, I have to stop by and “drag main street” a couple of times before heading on to wherever else we maybe going. I guess you could say that you can take the Okie out of the small town but you can’t take the small town out of the Okie.

When I was just a lad, Ada was a great place to grow up. Everyone knew everyone, you could leave your doors unlocked, leave the keys in the ignition, the big event of the week each Autumn was Friday night football and the biggest “crime” a kid could commit was leaving a burning brown paper bag outside someone’s front door. (If you don’t know what was in the bag… well, let your imagination go to work) Yes, it was what today seems like a far simpler time in a galaxy far far away.

Unfortunately, for anyone with any sense of nostalgia, I’m afraid that the old axiom of “You can’t go home again” is somewhat true. Although I visit occasionally, I haven’t lived in Ada for 43 years and boy has a lot changed. One of the headlines in the local paper Friday evening was about a drive by shooting. And it seems that about every other week, someone is arrested for operating a meth lab in their house. Physically, although the basic town is the same, there is so much new stuff and so much of the old stuff is gone so that now it’s just not the same place that memories are made of. One of the houses I lived in is gone, the grade school is gone, the high school is gone, all three of my dad’s business buildings are gone, the after school and weekend teen hangouts where we used to listen to the juke box and drink malts are either not there or are now occupied by the latest fast food eateries that didn’t even exist 43 years ago. And, to top it all off, the place where all the kids used to go to “neck” by the lake… that area’s been turned into a greenbelt walking/jogging path. Jeesh… have they no respect for tradition?

So, as one generation begrudges the loss of its memories, another generation is just starting to form theirs. But I have to wonder if the kids of today will wonder decades from now when they return to town …”hey, didn’t there used to be a McDonalds on that corner?” And the baton of old times lost will have been passed. Pictures of visited friends in the gallery.