I never thought I would miss my hometown. Sure, I was going to miss my family, friends, teachers, and the people who lived there, but I never thought that I would miss the town itself.
Main Street was always full of old people driving eight miles per hour and middle schoolers thinking they were cool on their skateboards cruising down the sidewalks. There was always a cop in the dirt lot before the high school or waiting by the middle school where you pull off of the highway. I couldn't go to Albertsons without running into at least three people I knew, whether they were classmates, old teachers, daycare parents and kids, or elementary kids that I taught theater to. Those small-town vibes were something I loved and hated while growing up, and now that I'm in another small town for college, I find myself looking for some of the familiarity that I saw everywhere while growing up.
Though I don't miss going to Sonic and having to wait twenty minutes to get a single slushy, I do miss the drive-in where I got my favorite combination of mozzarella sticks, jalapeno poppers, and a chocolate peanut butter shake. I miss driving down Freezeout on the way home from Boise and just seeing the valley. I miss the sound of my grandpa's farming equipment at odd hours of the morning.
It's the strange little things that have stuck with me about my hometown that seem to never really go away. My best friend and I had a spot up on the old dirt roads that overlooked the entire valley. It was there that we had a bonfire once with all our friends and sat and watched the city lights and shooting stars as we prepared to say our goodbyes as we left on our own paths after high school. We spent many-a-night on that old lookout, just talking and listening to music and enjoying the ignorance of our youth.
It's the feeling I get when I finally hit that "Entering Gem County" sign after six hours of driving back home for a break or a long weekend. The familiarity of all the same backroads and stop signs and train tracks that I grew up on and that will always be there, because, let's face it--even though the trains don't run, we will always have the pot-holed tracks when trying to get anywhere in that town.
It's the sense of peace and serenity when I stop at the graveyard up on the hill across from the church to visit my AP Lit teacher who was so much more than just a teacher to all of us. She is a constant reminder that even in the toughest of times you can still be oh-so-kind and that sometimes the worst things happen to the best types of people. I remember always being a little afraid of that place before that summer, but now I feel her with me every time I drive by and see the purple pinwheel spinning even though there is no wind.
I grew up in a town of 6,000 people. I went to preschool with the kids I graduated with, lived on the same street my whole life, and people at the grocery store said I looked like my grandparents when they were younger. It's crazy to think that places like this actually exist, and I lived eighteen years of that. There are no one-way streets, I can count the number of stoplights on one hand, and everything is closed on Sundays. But it was home. It always will be home.
No matter where my future takes me, I know that I will always be proud of my roots. I will always go back to that place and remember all the times I crashed my bike, ran down the road laughing with friends, sprinted across town playing fugitive with a group of friends past curfew, almost had my first kiss, and took my first prom photos. I'll always remember the night a few of us went and sat on the football field in the pitch dark and just thought about life until the sprinklers came on and we ran around screaming as we got soaked. I'll never forget my days of playing dragons and horses by the backstop in the field at recess, or the bandages on my hands from playing on the monkey bars too much, or my first 100th day of school. Times may come and change the place where I grew up, but it will always live on in my heart.
