Going home

My high school

"You can't go home again."
--Thomas Wolfe (book title)

But you can.  And yesterday, I did.

Not really, of course.  Not in the sense Wolfe intended.  But one can indeed go back physically to his home town, look at it once more -- with pleasure or dismay at the changes -- and remember all the good times.  (There undoubtedly were bad times, too, but they have a wonderful way of fading quickly with time.)

My sister called me from my home town -- a smallish to medium sized burg in the southwestern part of the state -- and told me she was there for an in-law's funeral.  She wanted to wander around, and wondered if I wanted to join her.  I did.  And so, I did.

Yesterday (like today and tomorrow) was unbelievably -- and unseasonably -- warm and sunny.   I put in a quick hour of piano practice, dug out my sunglasses from last summer's backpack, and jumped in the car.  Two hours later, I pulled into the parking lot of a venerable hotel that was built at the same time the city was founded.

We spent the afternoon walking through the neighborhoods in which we had grown up, as well as exploring the high school grounds.  These destinations were within the "inner city" -- that part of town that's remained unchanged, essentially, since the aftermath of World War II.  Then we drove around some of the more outlying areas -- areas that were farmland and industrial areas when we were kids.  The industries are still there -- but mostly shut down, abandoned, or operating at a fraction of capacity.  The farmlands -- like exurban farmlands everywhere -- have become a messy hodgepodge of strip malls, Walmarts, service stations, and fast food outlets -- interspersed with fairly new residential areas. 

The population has nearly doubled since I was in high school -- all of the increase ending up in the sprawl outside the old city limits.

My high school was as beautiful as ever, although I've read that its measures of academic performance have fallen precipitously.  The school has gone downhill to the point where local residents now refer to it as the city's "ghetto" high school -- not for its appearance or location, which, as I say, remain spectacularly beautiful.  But for the academic quality and level of ambition of its students, resulting, at least in part, from local unemployment.  The unemployment is structural, not cyclical -- timber, paper and aluminum industries with their high-paying union jobs are gone, probably forever -- and has brought with it concomitant increases in  social maladjustment, feelings of futility and worthlessness, petty criminal activity, and drug use. These are problems common to many of the school's students -- and probably to their parents, as well. 

So, visiting the high school was a pleasure, but my knowledge of its present difficulties was saddening.

Our old neighborhoods were even nicer than I remember.  The trees have grown larger; the lawns are better tended.  These residential areas, dating from the 1920s and 30s, always seemed superior to tract neighborhoods in other cities, each house having been built by a different builder and architect in differing styles.  Such diverse neighborhoods are now increasingly uncommon, in any city, and it was a pleasure to walk past block after block, appreciating houses that had been well-designed originally and well-maintained over the years.

Revisiting my home town, and enjoying the visit, is like visiting mountains and forests in today's world.  You have to view it selectively, as though framing a photo.  For example, going on a wilderness hike, you can often take a beautiful photo of a forest, but only if you frame the shot to avoid the powerlines in the background, the freeway to the left, and the massive clearcut to the right. 

Similarly, while the old residential areas were a pleasure to visit, I had to ignore the pathetic sights of the once thriving downtown -- a once-traditional "Main Street" that is now a trashy collection of pawn shops, thrift shops, bail bond emporiums, fast food restaurants, and deserted buildings.  I had to ignore certain large vacant spaces in other parts of town -- places where old buildings, undistinguished architecturally, no doubt, but impressive as local landmarks, had been torn down and replaced by not much of anything.  I had to ignore the fact that the school district is currently deciding whether to shut down certain formerly prestigious schools as too expensive to maintain with the district's declining enrollments.

All in all, it was fun to make yet another return to the old home town.  And so, yes, I did go home again.  But, I also appreciate exactly what Thomas Wolfe had in mind.  Just as I can't go back to being a teenager, I can't go back to my home town as it was and as it felt while I was growing up -- an optimistic, self-confident community cheerfully climbing up a rising curve of prosperity.

Southwest Washington has long since passed over its own hump of prosperity.  The curve now seems headed in the other direction.