My Little Town: Returning Home After 33 Years Away

“In my little town, I grew up believing, God keeps his eye on us all….Lord, I recall, in my little town.” --Simon and Garfunkel, 1975, written by Paul Simon

Whoever said “you can’t go home again” was wrong, at least for me, at least on a recent chilly January Saturday, when I did go home. Again. 

I returned to one of the places I called home when I was growing up: West Springfield, Massachusetts. This little town was my home from the 6^th to the 12^th grade, from early adolescence and oh so awkward puberty to my eighteenth year when I grew a full mustache and beard and then went away to college and my parents moved. Again. Forty-three years ago, I left “West Side” as it was nicknamed, and set out for the rest of my life, never really looking back.

Yes, I’d returned to my little town once, a decade ago, spent an afternoon riding around its streets and driving past the homes my family lived in, houses that looked so tiny somehow, shrunken from my memory’s image, neighborhoods that were at once both familiar and yet, so foreign too. I drove past the high school I attended and tried to go in but the doors were locked and so I was forced to squint through the windows to try and get a glimpse of the place where I fell hard for my first girlfriend, at 16, Charlene, she with her Irish eyes and smile and kind ways.  At this school I grew to know all too well, what the phrase “sex and drugs and rock and roll” meant. It’s the place I was bullied for being unwilling to fight, and the place I found shelter in the love of a small group of loyal and fun and trusted friends. 

It’s the place I became, in part, the me I am this day. My little town.

So, on a Saturday last week, when my GPS directed me to the streets I’d walked as a kid and driven as a teenager, I was surprised by how much I knew the landmarks and did not know this place at all anymore.  When we return to the spot where we were born or where we grew up, its natural to take an inventory, of that which still is and of that which is long gone.

I crossed a familiar bridge over the wide Connecticut River that separates the city of Springfield from its western suburb. That crossing over evoked a flash of déjà vu, as if I had just driven over it in my parent’s pale green 1974 Buick LeSabre land yacht. The 1950’s era boxy glass and wooden church on Westfield Street where I first met God for real, at youth group--it looked the same too. 

But lots of places were changed or gone. The bank I worked at, Third National Bank. It became Bank of New England that begat Fleet Bank that begat Bank of America. The Sears Department Store where I bought Christmas gifts for my family as a kid (bubble bath for sister, socks for Dad) was torn down, replaced by a strip mall. Gone. As was Donut Dip where it was ninety-seven cents for a dozen donuts, as was Duke’s Variety Store, the best hangout corner in town.

Maybe I should apologize here for sounding like a nostalgic old man, but I guess that’s what I am these days, some days at least, especially that day I made a pilgrimage to the little town where a generation ago, I came of age.  When you’ve got more years behind you than years in front of you, it’s hard not to occasionally drift to the past and remember when, and if you are blessed or if you are mellowed, you can look back with fondness.

The best part of that journey back in time was just being with some of my oldest friends in the world. It was me and Brian and Joe and Bob, and by Facetime and text, Dennis, and Dave, all together again, over eggs and bacon and coffee. I hadn’t spent any significant time with these guys for thirty-three years. We all spoke of our families, kids, grandkids and spouses and jobs still going on and retirement and, of course, we told stories about life in high school all those years ago. 

The emotion I most felt, as I drove away from that reunion, was gratitude. It was a deep and abiding feeling that God had given me just the community of friends I needed at that time in my life and that though we were now separated by so much time that had passed, still we had been friends and we were friends, and we will be friends.

My faith has given me two ways to look at life that I could not live without. The first is that it encourages me to always, always look for the good in my world, for the blessings, for grace, for love that is looking for me, love unexpected, but there it is. Always. Wow. I can see this life as either a miracle of abundance or a deficit of scarcity. I can live with daily thanksgiving, or I can live with aggrieved entitlement. Faiths tells me to be thankful for gifts like old friends.

Faith tells me to be a person of memory and remembering too. In a way, faith is founded in memory. Folks of faith gather together to remember sacred stories and then bring those stories into this present life. When we remember, we re-member. We get back together. We hear the God stories again and give thanks and then keep on living and keep on loving.

In my little town.  I remembered. I remember. Thank you, God.  

 The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.