Wading in the Wood

I'd sit on his lap in that big old Buick and steer as we drove through town
He'd tousle my hair and say son take a good look around 
This is your hometown 
-  Bruce Springsteen "My Hometown"

Part 1:

My hometown is Inwood, Iowa. On a map, Inwood is a pinpoint of humanity surrounded by farmland, not forest. I suppose at one time the name Inwood was accurate, though. 

Inwood's population stood on its tiptoes to touch 550 when I was born. That seems like a petite sum now, but five hundred and fifty people is a towering number to a toddler. Inwood was my world. No other place existed. 

Children grow into their hometowns like plants in the spring. Fingernails sow the dirt with chubby, crawling fingers. The sunshine warms round, rolling torsos on blankets of grass. Vitalizing pools of well water are absorbed in to the skin. As a child shoots up, their roots dig deep. Unknowingly, they become part of the land.

Mobility only deepens this bond. First, the front house steps are conquered, and then the back yard. The surrounding sidewalks are traversed, as is the gravel alley that slices the block in two. When that square of homes has been escaped, the surrounding neighborhood is explored. Children will eventually discover, and then memorize, the whole town. The pathways, bike trials, and paved streets will be spun into them like double helices of DNA. 

If a person moves to that same small town, they will never have that connection. They may call it their home, but it cannot be their hometown. You have to be born to a place to share its pulse.

In Inwood I knew where all the best bike jumps were. I knew which trees had branches like ladder rungs. I knew where to look for lost change in the laundry mat. I knew which church door to sneak through to slake my summer thirst. I knew which nozzle in the pool's dressing room stung the least. I knew which house had the best Halloween candy. 

I knew Inwood by heart, and Inwood knew mine. A village does raise a child.

But the town was not my only friend. There were other boys in the wood. Even then I had no idea when all of us had met. Like my older sister, they had always been there. We did what was required of boys, which meant we crashed our bikes, threw rocks at passing railroad cars, and got kicked out of the pool for jumping in during rest break. Our kites were ensnared by telephone lines. Our new clothes returned home dirty and torn.

Describe Inwood in one sentence: The farm tractors were adorned with bunting for the 4th of July parade. 

Then my dad changed jobs. My parents bought a new house in a new town. Rock Valley was only 14 miles away, but that distance might as well be 14,000. When we left Inwood, we didn't look back.

My hometown tendrils had been severed. Untethered, I was floating over foreign soil. I had lost my home, my yard, my friends, and even my name. I was no longer Brent. I was "new kid."

I drifted in and out of the assigned Summer Recreational programs alone. I might have made friends if I was a gifted athlete, but in that regard, I had arrived empty handed. The kids in Rock Valley didn't need or want me there. Why would they? I had nothing of value to offer. They already had each other and their hometown roots were still attached.

I was about to enter 4th grade, but I was already nine years behind the rest of the class.

Part 2: 

This is just a variation on a theme. I've written about my days in Inwood and Rock Valley many times before. This time I was inspired by the introduction in The Best American Travel Writing 2019 - a gift from Daphne. In it, editor Alexandra Fuller writes of her home country, Zimbabwe, and how it is, "...like the home of a few of the writers in this piece, no longer the place I knew as a child..."

I began to wonder what I would find if I was to walk the streets of Rock Valley today, and then I corrected myself. I graduated from Rock Valley High School, but Rock Valley isn't my hometown. 

That a title belongs to Inwood. 

But why? I lived in both towns for nine years, and I wasn't even conscious of my environment for the first few years in Inwood. Doesn't that tip the hometown scales towards Rock Valley? No. It doesn't. I wasn't born in two places - only one. 

I wrote the Part 1 to this post as a way to explore how a hometown could possibly become so important to someone. I don't know if I was successful in that endeavor, but it was fun imagining how a town can become one with a child. 

While considering the importance of birthplaces, I have come to believe that there are three facts to accept: you can't choose your family, and you can't choose your birthplace, but both have an influence on who you are. I'll always sound like my dad when I swear, and the smell of burning leaves will whisk me back to a crisp, fall day when I was five. That can't be helped, and it is nothing to be ashamed of. 

Birthplace matters. But for some, it matters too much.

Years ago, I attended a wedding in northeast Iowa. While standing in line to use the bathroom, I overheard two men discussing the groom. One said to the other, "He's a decent enough guy, I guess. And he treats her right, but he's from Cedar Rapids."
The other sniffed loudly and said, "Yeah... well, you ain't shit if you ain't from the corner." They both nodded in agreement.

If you're like me, and not from the corner, then they were talking about us, too.

There's no doubt that I had fun in Rock Valley. I made some good friends, and I have a lot of fond memories. But there always seemed to be an unspoken agreement that I was only at the party because they let me be there. After nine years, I was still just a guest. 

In the movie Jaws, Sherriff Brody's wife Ellen asks her friend, "I just want to know one simple thing. When do I get to become an islander?"
"Ellen, never. Never. You're not born here, you're not an islander. That's it."

Here is fact number four: Your family and your birthplace do not define you. Sorry wedding guest #2 (cwidt), I am not from your parochial corner, and you are not better than me because of that. Sorry Mom, I do swear like Dad, but I promise I won't make the same decisions that he made.

So, I'm back to my initial question. What would I find if I walked the streets of Inwood today? With the help of Google Maps, I can take a virtual tour of the bustling main street.

I pointed and clicked my way past the ball field, the park, and the pool. I also passed the two houses we lived in. Even from this electronic distance, I could see that they are all much smaller than I remembered. No surprise there.

I've got nothing against the town, but I don't think I'll put "Visit Inwood Again" on my bucket list. There isn't anything there for me now.

Thousands of years ago Heraclitus said it better than I can today, "No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man." 

Ironically, The Best American Travel Writing 2019 has inspired me to not travel this time. But only not down a path to a past that has faded away.

None of the boys I knew would still be in Inwood. They've grown up, too. If I met one of those men, what would we have to say to each other?  Nothing. We wouldn't know the other, and it wouldn't matter if we did.

Another boy from the wood grew up and moved to Des Moines like I did. He's also a high school teacher. With a shared past and a similar present, you might think we have all kinds of things to talk about. We don't. The last time we saw each other, we pretended we didn't and kept walking. That was Inwood. Those days are gone.

It's important to know your roots. They tell you where you come from. But your growth above ground is where you are going.

I believe I'll stop here and read some of the essays in The Best American Travel Writing 2019. Perhaps I'll be inspired to visit a place that actually exists.