Soap Box

I don't know if somebody wrote it, if it was a line out of a play, an offhand remark or the words of some Cracker Barrel philosopher, but I've heard it said so many times that you can never go home any more.

The phrase could have a plethora of meanings, it's certainly not meant to convey the thought literally, because we can certainly go home again, physically, by virtue of taking a trip, but I don't really interpret it that way. I think it deals with deeper emotions and old memories, fixations of how things were compared to how they are now, changing landscapes and changing times, old friendships, fledgling love affairs and friends we always intended to stay in touch with but somehow never did. 

I was visiting my hometown of Wilmington, North Carolina a while back. Wilmington is a beautiful city, historical, picturesque, and charming as only old Southern cities can be. It is known as the city of a million azaleas and hosts an annual Azalea Festival. The city is inundated with flowers and the prolific sight of the azaleas in every color and size amongst the Spanish moss covered cypress trees in Greenfield Gardens is a site one never forgets.

Wilmington is a seaport town with historical roots that go back to the Revolutionary War days it's heritage reflected by the antebellum architecture and massive centuries old oak trees that line the main streets of town. 

During my years of growing up there it seemed that the population was a static thirty thousand people and it now boasts a population of well over one hundred thousand.

I don't know if my leaving town had anything to do with the exponential growth or not but it seemed about the time I cut the apron strings it really started to pop, adding among other things a major motion picture production studio and becoming the location for several long running television shows and films, with Hollywood stars buying homes and people moving to town in droves.

I got carried away talking about my hometown and got away from the original intent of the piece, which was about not being able to go home again.

Anyway, I went to Wilmington to visit my aunt. I knew exactly where her house was but due to all the new streets and the rerouting of the traffic, despite being within a few blocks I couldn't find it. I ended up having to call her and get directions.

Maybe one of the reasons they say you can never go home again is because you can't find the danged place with all the newfangled changes, one way streets, traffic lights, new residential and business areas and all that unfamiliar stuff that comes along with progress and growth.

Maybe another reason for not being able to go home again is because you don't know anybody.
Seems that most of the folks I knew as a kid have just evaporated off the face of the earth or go into hiding when I go back home and the last time I checked, the mayor was from New York City.

And let's face it, we each follow our own star and sometimes that star leads us to far places and we tend to make our homes in areas that best provide for the lifestyle we have chosen for ourselves, where we can advance in our professions.

We get married, start families and cultivate a whole new set of friends, each of us carving out a little piece of a place where we feel at home, surrounding ourselves with the trappings of our tastes and our lifestyles, the environment becoming so familiar with the passing years that it's hard to realize that somewhere else was once our home.

I will always carry a piece of Wilmington, North Carolina around in my heart. It will forever be the city of my birth, my hometown and a place I'm extremely proud to say I hale from, though I have lived in Tennessee for going on fifty years now and can't imagine living any place else.

But I have to slightly refute the �you can never go home again� statement.

You can go home again.

It's just not home any more.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels

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