This is not my home town

I drove to Rexburg for the weekend. There’s a new Wallgreens on the corner, just below the hospital. The shop that sells wedding dresses is still there but the jewelry store has changed hands. The blacksmith on Main Street is gone, but he’s been gone for years. I wonder how many people even know he was there. Or that there used to be a seafood restaurant in the space the city offices now occupy. I had my first taste of shrimp in the same room where I later got my marriage licence.

Rexburg is small, so you can always been sure you’ll see someone you know when you go to the grocery store. So I went to buy some cookies but I didn’t see anyone I knew. All the people I saw were waving and talking to other people I didn’t know. And I wasn’t looking for someone that would hug me and tell me I look good. I would have settled for someone I hate. On my way out of town, I thought, this is not my home town.

Think back: 1985. The devil comes out at midnight, they’ll tell you, so you better be home before 12. But sometimes, you can stay out pretty late and avoid the devil if you’ve got some good friends and you know where to go. So we got a stereo and some cassette tapes and drove up on the dry farms. We pulled off the road, and drove to the middle of a potato field. There were six of us. Three boys and three girls. We put the stereo on top of the car and turned it up real loud. Then we danced. It was a little chilly, but that’s why you bring the girls.

Amy and I talk about whether or not we romanticize our past and what it was like growing up there. But it really doesn’t matter, I guess, because it’s changing, and there’s no going back to the way it was.