On the afternoon of the second day of my release from
military service, November 13, 1970, I neared my hometown of Pine Bluff, Arkansas harboring strange
feelings. F. Scott Fitzgerald in one of his books, Tender is the Night, I think, describes a man’s going home to a small
town in America from Europe for his father’s funeral. He described the
competing feelings far better than I ever could.
I was not going to a funeral, but I found the memories of long-ago
times crowding in and finding warm places in my heart. I saw a road leading to
a lake once legendary for crappie-fishing, then a spot where a cousin
experienced a terrible car wreck. I headed my car, Steinbeck, along a highway where
our family sometimes traveled to and from our annual vacations to Florida. Some
years we headed in the opposite direction, to the Texas Gulf. All were glorious
events, which a snatch of a once popular song could place me within, to my
everlasting joy.
That made me think of choices ahead of me. I had money to
get to California, “light out for the territories,” so to speak. I had a place
to stay just a short piece ahead. I could “drop anchor” there.
California was an exciting, vibrant place abounding with
dreams waiting to be picked from trees.
Arkansas was under the tortured leadership of a progressive
governor. Like a great vessel reversing itself in the Ocean, it was turning
away from the bigotry and backwardness of the past. The state called itself “The
Land Of Opportunity.” Maybe it would become that. Was there some young entrepreneur
striving, even at that moment, to place the land of my birth on the map of history?
I knew this: There wasn’t a soul in the entire State of California
who cared a whit about my dreams or aspirations, not to mention the sacrifices
I had just made at my country’s request.
What I didn’t know was that here, in my native spoil, there
were few, outside of family and the dearest of old friends, who cared a whit
for those things as well. What would surprise most me most was that my entire
country felt the same way.
Steinbeck and I moved on into the future, singing happy
songs.
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