Poem
A home town is where you’re from. After a while, a home town is now where you’re from. Later on, the home town is where you’re from now. Finally, there is no finally, the home town is where you are.
The trouble is, who agrees? People in the current hometown see you as a newcomer. To be an old-timer you have to be there X years plus oh maybe some extra Y years. Where the X and the Y are variable, depending on the stakes, of tenure.
The earlier home towns don’t count, don’t count as home towns that is. But they’re important — good things and bad things happened in those places, that got you where you are now, God help you.
The first home town, well, that still is your home town. Even the people still back there, who remember you, call it your home town. Not that they’d welcome you back for good, of course. You’ve changed, they haven’t.
Someone not living in this home town told me last month, “You can’t make old friends.” She was right, friends if they last turn out that way.
There’s no place like home. Damn it.
©2018 Ben S. Pollock Jr.
