When I read Tara Westover’s memoir, “Educated,” she brought up a point most people wouldn’t get because they never thought about it. I missed it. And once Westover pointed the obvious out, it seemed like a neon sign, but that’s the nature of people, especially those who are raised in small towns. Normal is what you grow up with and see every day. That doesn’t mean it’s normal outside that context. In fact, it might not be anywhere near normal.
Westover’s father was a lunatic on the order of magnitude. More than once he told his family not to use seatbelts while he was driving, and drove through blizzards at sixty miles an hour because God was looking out after him and his family. God wasn’t. Mr. Westover wrecked his van more than once, injuring his wife and children. He barely survived an accident involving a gasoline explosion, and so did his oldest son. But to Tara Westover, who grew up in this environment, isolated from the rest of the world, this was normal.
I awoke a couple of hours ago, about two in the morning, and couldn’t remember the name of the pizza place in my hometown.
Pizza Hut experimented with have a franchise in Blakely Georgia, but it closed sooner than later. Blakely is one of those towns that is on the brink of becoming bigger and always will be. It keeps spreading away from the center of town, as most small towns do, but it’s like a condiment on a butter knife trying to cover an entire bun. There’s only so much.
People in small towns yearn for change as long as everything stays the same. No one ages, no one dies and no one is unhappy, until someone old dies, unhappily. But replacements are a dime a dozen, and the process begins anew with each death, only the names change.
But I can’t remember the name of the original pizza place.
So on occasion, my father would send me to go get pizza. He could give me money and I would walk the mile or so to the pizza place, whose name is gone forever now. I never stopped to think it was odd he sent me out on foot to get food, but it was never warm when I got back. No sidewalks or anything like that, and I wonder if people saw me walking with a pizza. We could have called it in, a minute or so both ways in a car, and then the pizza would still be hot. Of course, I ate it anyway because it never occurred to me things could be different.
The house that belongs to my father was always his house. I was a tenant, off and on, until I bought my first house, yet the house I bought was my first home, the first place I ever felt like I belonged. My father’s house was a prison when I was in school, and later, it was a symbol of my failure to launch, but never home. Never.
I’ve lived in the house in the woods now for nearly twenty-five years. Six dogs and a cat found their final resting place here. The nearest pizza place is eight miles away. The memories of my hometown pale a bit more every year, and Google Maps show me an alien and unwelcoming town where I was a stranger when I lived there, and I always will be.
Take Care,
Mike