Facing old fears, tasting old memories

I was six years old, and Older Brother and I were walking back from Church.  He suggested talking a short cut, across the railroad bridge over the mill dam.

I was too scared to do it.  Looking back, I think it was more the fear of a train coming with us half way across, but there were big gaps between the ties; gaps you could look through, down at the churning water racing the rapids below.

I went back yesterday, and I crossed the bridge.  It was strange, feeling the knot in my stomach from remembered fear.  Even after all those years, the memory was fresh, and for a moment it was possible to see the six year old Borepatch, looking at the bridge.

I'm not sure what I was looking for, but I didn't find it.  I went back because it's only a four hour (and a bit) drive from Chez Borepatch to Orono, Maine, but once we move back to Atlanta, it's a whole different story.  I figure this was my last visit to the town I grew up in.  Mom and Dad retired to Albuquerque, my brothers have made their lives far from here, and the kids I went to school with have grown older like me.  I'm not sure what we'd talk about if we met.

Some things have changed, not necessarily for the better.  My old Boy Scout Troop 47 - the second oldest continually serving Troop in the state - is now Troop 478.  I saw this on the Scout Hall doorway, and did not approve.  Peering through the glass of the windows, it's clear what happened: Troop 47 merged with Troop 48, the second Troop in town.  You can see both the Troop 47 flag and the Troop 48 flag hanging on the wall.  I guess that Scouting isn't popular enough anymore to support two Troops.  Back in the 1960s and 1970s, nobody thought twice when a bunch of 12 year olds went camping in February, up in Maine.  I guess it's different now, and not for the better.

Mill St. still has Pat's Pizza, and the Tap Room in the basement ("cellar" is maybe a better word) looks mostly what it was like in the late 1970s.  The pizza is the same, although they now have yuppie micro-brew beer from an Orono brewer on tap.  I guess that's a change for the better.  Think globally, drink locally.

The High School is now a Middle School, but looks the same as it did 17 years ago when I brought the baby #1 Son back.  I got a tour by the principle then - it had only been 15 years or so since I had graduated.  Looking at the windows gave a dim remembrance of the stress from exams.  It's almost to laugh thinking about that - how important they seemed then, and how unimportant they seem now.  Forgotten, even.  I wonder if today's stress will be forgotten thirty years from now.

But I went there looking for something, something more than just nostalgia.  It wasn't there.  Orono, like me, has gotten on with the business of living.  It isn't some sage on a mountain top, ready to whisper secrets of wisdom to those who climb to it's summit.  I guess it's true, that you can't go home again.



So good bye, my home town.  You were a really good place to grow up.  I'm glad to see that you're doing OK after all these years.

Somehow, I get the feeling that I won't be back again.