Riding The Brakes: 30513 Memories: The What-Ifs

Every few weeks for over a year in this space I have looked back at my hometown. I have recalled times, places and people who have impacted my life in varied ways. Some of what I have written has brought smiles, some elicited laughter, some things left behind a sense of the bittersweet.

Then there is this other feeling I find hard to whittle down to just the right word.

The feeling isn’t one of regret. After all, I am overwhelmingly blessed with the life I have experienced and now live. I would not ever change it.

The feeling is more one of wonder. No, it isn’t really the amazement aspect of wonder. It’s really more of the what-if type. You see every now and then, I feel this gentle voice whispering ‘what if?’.

“What if you never left there?”

“What if you left then came back to stay?”

I don’t know the answers to those questions. They’ll just have to dangle out there unanswered. I’d like to think I’d be okay. After all, despite all the hashtags and wokeness of our modern world, life is often still whatever you make of it, and I think I would have been able to make the most of what I would have been given.

Still that what-if place is out there on the fringes with other places that can pull people away from the here and now. Most of us like to think back on past times so we can relive good times. Deep down we understand that is not a place to live. Sure, it might be a nice neighborhood but it is not the reality of the here and now. The same could be said in a sense about regret. It can be a much different type of neighborhood than good memories but it can also be a place a person chooses to reside. That mysterious what-if territory is also out there. Like it’s neighbors, it isn’t a good place to stay for very long.

That doesn’t mean now and then I ponder what could have been. It also doesn’t mean that there is a part of me that has just a bit of envy for those who never left there or those who left and came back. I respect those who made a go of it in those hills I once called home.

Ultimately, it isn’t the same place I recall from my youth. Wishing and hoping won’t somehow change it back magically to some idyllic wide spot in the road known only by out-of-towners from one county away.

Still, I can look back. At some point though, I also have to move forward.

As most people these days do, I carry a phone with me almost everywhere I go. On that phone’s screen is a photo I placed on there several years ago. The photo is of a place in my home county. When I saw it initially I knew exactly

where it was taken. It is one of my favorite vistas of that place. It was taken from a highway that tops a hill headed south. The road stretches out before my eyes then, like a winding river, turns to the left out of sight. If you look above the cars and trucks on the highway into the horizon, all you see are layers on layers of the mountains that surround the area. I haven’t changed that photo in years partly because of my own laziness but partly because when I see that photo, it reminds me where I came from, and the importance that place and it’s people will always have in my heart.

30513: The What Ifs playlist:

John Mellencamp: "Small Town"

Chris Isaak "I Wonder"

The Byrds "My Back Pages"

Steely Dan "Reelin' In The Years"

Drivin' N' Cryin' "Honeysuckle Blue"

Better Than Ezra "A Lifetime"

Fleetwood Mac "Seven Wonders"

10,000 Maniacs "These Are Days"

Susan Enan "Bring On The Wonder"

Jars of Clay "Flood"

Gin Blossoms "Found Out About You"