"In my little town, I never meant nothin'
I was just my father's son,
Saving my money, dreaming of glory,
Twitching like a finger on the trigger of a gun."
Simon and Garfunkel, "My Little Town" (1975)
Thomas Wolfe wrote a famous novel titled "You Can't Go Home Again."Whether that assertion is true, the line has been used by many people to describe their attempts to revisit their youth.
I guess the title of Mr. Wolfe's novel (which was published after his untimely death at the age of 37) was valid.
All the same, my high school class held its 30th anniversary reunion in my hometown in central Arkansas this weekend.
And high school reunions are proof that one can go home again — if only for a few hours.
I would have liked to attend, but circumstances prevented me from doing so.
I hope attendance was good and that everyone who was there had a great time.
I attended our fifth anniversary reunion in 1983. At that point, many members of my class were becoming parents for the first time. Twenty-five years later, I'm sure there are members of my class who have advanced to the next phase of their lives — in which their children have married and are having children of their own.
As I recall, attendance at the reunion in 1983 was pretty good, although it probably could have been better.
For some members of my class, this weekend may have been the first time they've been back in town in a long time. If it was, they had a few surprises waiting for them.
The population of my hometown has exploded. When I was a little boy, there were fewer than 10,000 people living there.
The population had grown to around 20,000 by the time my high school class graduated — but, today, the population is more than 50,000, and my hometown is now the seventh-largest city in the state.
My hometown is now larger than some cities that seemed huge by comparison when I was a teenager.
When my high school class was still in high school, there was only one high school campus. But today, the town's population has grown so much that they've had to divide the high school into two campuses (the "East Campus" serves the ninth and 10th grades, the "West Campus" serves the 11th and 12th grades).
And there are some members of my class who are no longer with us — I know of two of my classmates who have died in the last six weeks, and I've heard of others over the years, although I'm sure there are a few I haven't heard about.
The reunion would have been a good chance to get caught up on what's happened to the members of my class.
That's really the point.
You can't "go home again" if what you seek to accomplish is to return to the way things used to be. But you can go home again if all you're trying to do is get reacquainted with some old friends, find out what's happened with everyone and share a few memories.
I don't think I would want to be 18 again! But I'm sorry I couldn't go home for the weekend.
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