Had lunch in my old home town of Clawson, Michigan today, the town I grew up in and went to high school, graduated with many friends I still see from time to time… stopped at a nice, cozy place called Tavern on the Main, where we’ve congregated in the summers during the car shows and all had lunch and beer together and caught up on each other’s lives… it was a pleasant hour or so today, spent by myself, musing on all of the memories this place, this town holds for me over my seven decades on the planet, and it still feels like home.
I wanted in the worst way to bump into someone I might know, but it didn’t happen. I dined on the lovely sunporch off the south side of the Tavern and felt the heat of the bright winter sun gleaming through the glass in my face… I know I was at times squinting for the sun was so intense but it also felt too good not to remain just where I was. I sat facing Main street and watched as the light traffic passed north and south slowly and casually, despite the rush of last minute shopping a few days before Christmas, everywhere else I had been this morning… through downtown Pontiac, across to Highland to see my sister Heidi at the senior center where she works… everywhere else this morning was in a mad rush to get somewhere, to buy something, to get somewhere before it was too late… but not me.
Just a few steps north of the Tavern along Main Street was where Harry’s Pool Hall used to be… it’s now a beauty shop and outwardly exhibits none of the unsavory look that Harry’s used to exude… or so I thought back in those days when it was one of my hangouts in my late teens… back in the mid-60s before Vietnam and Sirhan Sirhan changed the American landscape forever. Two summers ago I parked my ’95 Rolls Royce next to Rick Miller’s old cherry red Ford pick-up in front of Harry’s during the annual Clawson Car Show for the day… it ended up raining later in the afternoon, yet it was still a day of great fun and reuniting with lots of old pals. Rick ended up winning a pretty nice trophy as I remember…
And just south of the Tavern is a new place called the Woodpile or something akin to that… a nice smelling smoke house joint that I fear, swallowed up the old A & W Root Beer place I used to ride up to on my bike and order a “foamy” … all foam and hardly any root beer, yet it was still a thirst quencher as I recall.
I guess all things change, especially if you give them five or six decades to work their magic… and hardly anything stays the way we remember it. I thought about stopping by and maybe seeing some folks I know in the area but didn’t. I’m not the drop in type, and besides, it feels like everyone is pretty busy with Christmas things and it would probably just be an imposition, though they might not say so.
Got my annual appointment at the Ann Arbor VA on Thursday morning and then I head out once again on the open road south toward the vast farm lands of Ohio, and then down through the neatly fenced horse farms of Kentucky, and then farther on through the exquisite, pristine and endlessly rolling hills of Tennessee, and down further passed the cotton fields and pecan orchards of Georgia and finally I’ll see the palm trees and kudzued flora of my newly adopted state of Florida, where I now call home.
Still, as I gaze out onto the bright, sunny Main Street from my Tavern on the Main, as I finish my meditation this day, and prepare along with the rest of the world to begin a new and challenging year, I know I will always call this place my home, where I grew up, made life-long friends, fell in love, lost friends and dreams, made memories, had my heart broken, and forged most of my life. I am home.