Sometimes it is fun to go home. There is always a sense of nostalgia when I get to go back to my roots and experience the sights, sounds, and places that were there during my childhood. I am a sucker for reliving old memories and sometimes going home during certain times of year really causes those memories to come flooding back.
I grew up in Fairview, Oklahoma which is a small town of about 2,500 people. Fairview is a mix of the town from Footloose and Pleasantville. There is not a lot to do there; people love to gossip, and acceptance of anything out of the norm is low. Being a rock n’ roll loving kid with a rebellious spirit made it challenging to grow up there at times, but I don’t think I would choose to have grown up anywhere else. It is a quaint place that has a charm which makes it seem like it is frozen in time.
I had many motives for going home last weekend. My wife will call me sneaky for this, but one of the reasons was so that I could use all of my dad’s tools and cleaning supplies to give my Tahoe a good cleaning. I also planned on and succeeded in getting my parents and Rachel to help me do the cleaning. Rachel was surprised and had no idea that this was our task until we got there, but my mom sniffed out my motives a week earlier and knew exactly what I was up to. I guess she has been a part of way to many of my schemes and plans to be fooled. Hopefully Rachel never gets wise to my ways of manipulation!
Getting the car clean wasn’t the only motive though. I was just as excited about the act of cleaning the car as I was the result. I have a lot of good memories as a teenager spending hours cleaning my car so that I would have the sleekest machine in town. Many times my mom and dad would help me and it was always fun to spend that time with them. There is something about working together to get a project complete that brings about good conversation and good times. It really was nice and I enjoyed stirring up the old memories.
Any time I go home, I love to take the time to walk around the yard remembering events from days gone by. I look at the tree that we planted when my Grandpa died, the pipe I used to have to balance on to walk across the creek, the bridge where built forts and the graves of so many four legged childhood friends with whom I grew up. I like to walk over the hill where I used to ramp my three wheeler and dirt bikes and gaze with amazement at how much smaller it seems now than when I was 12. It is always fun and it is always a nice reminder that no matter how much we grow or how much we change, some things always stay the same.
Something that has not changed is the wind. It is always really bad! Yes, the wind can be rough anywhere in Oklahoma, but it is always blowing in Fairview. The area is very flat, and there are not a lot of trees. We got to experience the joys of the wind first hand on Sunday when we went on our weekly bike ride. We knew we would be facing wind (we always do when we ride there) so we thought we would get a move on the ride earlier than normal.
It did not matter; I don’t think I have ever ridden in wind like that. It felt like I was peddling in pudding and it was completely demoralizing to work and work yet not feel like you are making any progress. Much like running a marathon, there was a significant amount of mental anguish that outweighed the physical difficulty. Getting started is always the worst. There seems to be this bleak feeling that you will never reach the desired destination. Fortunately, Rachel had insisted that we fight against the wind on the way out so that we would have the wind at our backs on the way back to the house. That was an awesome call. The thing that kept me going through the brow beating violence of the head wind was knowing that a sweet reward of speed and easy peddling awaited me on the way back. As we approached the final mile of the ride, my attitude completely changed and I wanted to fight the wind just a little bit more so that I could have that extra time with the wind at my back.
As soon as I turned around, the ride changed. It felt like I was shot out of a sling shot and propelled back into Fairview with a rocket on my back. When I got back into downtown, I was thrilled to learn that I was actually breaking the speed limit. I wonder if you can get a ticket on a bike. My average pace more than doubled on the way back. I am sure there is a lesson in there somewhere about the rewards of hard work, but I am not smart enough to figure it out.
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