Working on my book tonight and missing my little Texas hometown. Missing train tracks running through the neighbor's yard and june bugs and populations signs with only three digits. Missing longhorn cattle and loud bugs and fried everything. I'm missing big green trees, hay bales in freshly cut fields and the sound of old guys sitting at the convenience store/diner booth playing dominoes and chatting about the local high school football game on Friday night. "How's the team looking this year?" I miss hearing those accents and phrases like "Well, I'm going to head on over to the Walmarts in a while...." or the inevitable daily chats about the weather.
One of my favorite song lyrics is from one of my favorite Southern boys, Don Williams.
"I can still hear the soft Southern winds in the live oak trees.
And those Williams boys, they still mean a lot to me--Hank and Tennessee
I guess we're all going to be what we're going to be
But what'll you do with good ole' boys like me"
I can just hear his smooth, mellow voice as I type those words. Love this song so much. It's about getting out and moving on, but also how you never do leave completely. The places of your childhood--the smells and sounds and the feel of the air--they never leave. And even if you don't want to necessarily move back, there's something about it that you can't shake from your soul. And even if things happened that weren't good, that made those times less than happy on occasion, there is a flaxen thread that connects you always. There is a longing to return, but not to the way it was. The longing, I find, is to return to the childhood you wished it would have been.
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