I Was Baarn Here...

(If ya'll'd read the following with a Suthern aksent, I'd be much obliged)

I swear, driving back into Greenwood, SC was like using a time machine. I've been back lots of times since high school, but for some reason, this time ghosts kept on coming out of the trees. Driving my pickup down Hwy 25, I passed my friend Jamie's old house where she used to live with her parents. They had had horses in the yard and last time I was there, her first wedding dress was hanging on the back of her closet door, never to be worn because her fiancé broke it off. She's married to somebody else now. He is too.

Riding down the stretch of 254 to my neighborhood, I remembered when a policeman ticketed my friend Jeremy for going 60 in a 45. He'd been on his way to see me. I had just laughed at him when he got to my house. He wasn't a boy used to breaking the rules and I wasn't a girl used to holding someone's affections as tightly and as unknowingly as I held his.

Then there was the Dixie, Greenwood's favorite greasy spoon. Walking in and picking up the menu conjured up my friend Derek right beside me saying, "Put that down. Whaddyou mean, comin' to the Dixie and pickin' up the menu?" As if we ever ordered anything besides a Dixie Cheese half and half and a cherry Dr. Pepper. Which I felt obliged to repeat in the present, just as if Derek were sitting on the adjacent stool giving me that look of good ole boy disdain while he chewed on a toothpick.

It's weird how spaces can have that affect on you. This town, that isn't so small anymore, is littered with my memories from end to end and even a little farther if you count that one New Year's Eve when we drove out to Saluda to smash Welche's Sparkling Grape Juice bottles on the pavement behind Adam's dad's fireworks' stand. I'd never live here again. I'm pretty sure I'd poke my eyeballs out in boredom. But this wasn't a bad place to grow up. And even when the ghosts bring with them a heavy dose of melancholic nostalgia, it's still a pretty nice place to visit ever once in a while.