Small Town Breezes

Childhood memories are some of the most precious things the mind holds.  My adult years seem to blanket them little by little and they become harder to trace beneath the current chaos.   In the year 2008, as I was amidst the busy of finalizing fall plans and beginning the downward slide of year end activities I was reminded of how towering a small memory can be.  How a tiny treasure of a time, a place, and a person can carry weight in us that more looming concerns cannot overshadow.

It was the end of October, and I had dressed my preschool son, Owen, in the required costume for their classroom challenge.  Dress up as “what you want to be when you grow up,” he went as a shepherd.  Humorous as that is in itself, that career was only the first on the list of things he’d like to try his hand at.  Next was professional football player, in case the shepherding gig didn’t work out.  I love the priorities of a child.  In some ways they are more legitimate than what the adult mind under pressure is able to conceive.  Children aren’t basing their desires on anything but the direction of their heart. 

That childhood outlook is what grows fond memories I think.  It is that innocence in perspective that allows us to take in the scene in front of us without calculating any of the costs.  I have tried to hold on to those memories, because responsibility, though valuable in so many ways to me, has darkened some of my view of things.  I’m much more ready to criticize and correct what I see these days, but I’m still at the ready to fall into the freedom of my memories.

After dropping Owen off at his classroom I scurried up the hill to the school office, holding the hand of my toddler, while attempting to steer a stroller at the same time.  Birthing three boys in just under four years was not exactly what we had planned, and I’m pretty sure these moments of juggling them over sidewalks and busy streets were the reason it wasn’t recommended in that baby book I didn’t finish. 

I stepped into the school’s financial office to pay our bill for the next month and as was common, had a little chat with Dawn as I filled out my check.  Our family had plans to travel out of town the following week, and as she inquired where we planned to go, I pulled out my usual responses.  Everyone seems to know someone in Michigan, but few of them have ever heard of my hometown, so without looking up, without any belief that it mattered I said, “We’re going to visit my family in Burr Oak.” 

“Oh, I’ve been there,” she responded.

I was sure she was mistaken. 

“Really?” I looked up, concerned that I was dealing with someone who wants so badly to relate to others they are willing to lie a little to keep up.  Her look was sincere and communicated something beyond a flippant memory of passing through.  Most people don’t pass through Burr Oak.  It’s the kind of town you have to leave the highway to see.  Its main street is charming, but somewhat buried behind the flurry of bigger, faster, and needing to get there.  My next response isn’t very flattering to my town maybe, but it was my honest reaction to her claim.

“Why?”

Why would a woman here in Mt. Juliet, TN have visited, and seemingly held onto some remnant of pleasure in visiting my little town.  It wasn’t that I thought it impossible to enjoy, it was more a mixture of honest questioning, “what did you do there?” and a tiny bit of protectiveness over the little family that is my home.  As if she had been eating out of my parent’s fridge.  Which wasn’t all that far from what actually happened.

She explained that her parents had split up when she was young, and she would go to Flint, MI to visit her dad in the summer.  “He used to drive me to Burr Oak to visit his favorite restaurant, a little hole in the wall place on the main street.  He’d buy me lunch and then we’d get the best chocolate malts!”  Her satisfied grin, told me enough.  She knew this place well.  It wasn’t a whimsical glancing back, but a solid place to stand where she had carved a memory that was meaningful to her.  She explained that her father had since passed away and she hadn’t been back in many years.

After asking her several questions to be certain, I explained that the only place she could be talking about would be the restaurant that my parent’s had owned in Burr Oak.  My own mother, who had passed away 7 years previous to our conversation, would have been the one to make her lunch, and mix up her chocolate malt.  I saw her eyes light up as I recounted the ice cream counter, the worn wood floors and homemade breads.  It wasn’t just a memory of a place to her, it was revisiting an experience that solidified a relationship with her dad. 

Small towns, full of small places, insignificant names, seemingly interchangeable street names, parks, and festivals are often overlooked by the more adult perspectives in really grown up places.  I look around me as I drive around my Tennessee home.  The interstates surrounding Nashville pull me along with them to make sure I get where I’m going, and I’m driven to make something of my own name, my own talents, my own ability. 

Yet, somehow in the memory of at least one mind, it was our connection to a small town that made me significant.  My own mother’s peaceful example of serving and offering her very best to everyone who came through the door was more than enough to bring visitors back for another sandwich and milkshake.  One man drove over two hours away from a grown up city, to offer his daughter the best he could find. 

I had to wonder as we smiled over our memories, if the people still there, walking the streets of tiny Burr Oak, MI felt a little shiver.  Did a wind of remembrance blow down the street as we stirred up our individual versions of a past we had unexpectedly connected 500 miles away?  Probably not, but if there were ever a place that allowed such winds to blow, it would undoubtedly be in a charming, yet unassuming small town like Burr Oak.