CAN WE EVER "GO HOME AGAIN?"

 CAN  WE  EVER "GO HOME AGAIN?"

  "There is no one to cry with,
      no one to remember with...
    But everything  (as in a dream)
       is different
   People, things, walls.and
       no one knows us--we're
   Strangers. We got to the wrong
      place."
         .....Anna Akhmatova
                   1889- 1966

In the past year or two

   CHS kids of the forties

have "gone home" to 

    our hometown...

all expecting it "to be

    the same..."

Wylie went back

   Sue went back

        Art went back

    Shade went back

and

Clovis was not the same.

Over time thousands 

   of people have lived

in "our town" and are

         now gone.

Hardly a store or business

  was/is left from olden times;

Where were Fox Drug,  

   Barry Hardware, Woolworth's,

Duckworth Drug, Montgomery Ward's,

   Busy Bee, Snazzy Pig, or

Standridge's ? Stanley Pawol,

   Gateway Auto, or Herb's Spudnuts?

Oh, Mesa, Lyceum, and State

   Theaters were still there,   but

their screens were       dark,

   and Gene Autry, Roy Rogers,

Tex Ritter, Johnny Mack Brown,

    and Wild Bill Elliot would

never again in all eternity ever

    grace the Lyceum again

on Saturday afternoons.

As if to remind old timers that

    life, as it was once there

in simpler times would not

   be back--the marvelous aroma

of Coney Island hot dogs with 

   onions, no longer wafted 

down Main Street.   

    and no one knew what 

"Dragging Main"  meant...

   except

The Red Bricks of Main Street,

   born and laid in 1918--

they had been there for

   a hundred years   and had

seen, heard, felt,  and witnessed

   it all       and were worn down

some old timers said:

   "only a quarter inch."

And dear Levi---of CHS '51, once 

  said: "I've lived all over the

world in my profession, and take

   it from me--there's no place

as good as Clovis, and the red 

   bricks of Main Street."

--------

MIL

27 JULY 2019