You Can't Go Home Again

by Thomas Kies

Thomas Wolfe wrote the novel You Can’t Go Home Again. 

I saw just how true that is when, a few weeks ago, I went back to where I spent most of my formative years.  I’ve been aching to go back to see the places where I grew up, places where many of my fondest memories originated, places that made me smile. 

Well, I did that. First of all, it’s not easy to get from here to there.

I booked a flight from where we live now to where I used to live. Our closest airport is an hour away and the flight was wheels up at five in the morning.  Want to guess how early I had to wake up to get there on time?

Then a three-hour layover in Charlotte.  Time enough for breakfast and a snooze at the gate.

Upon arriving in Rochester, New York, I rented a car and drove two hours to get to Corning, New York, where I was born.  By the way, that hospital where I drew my first breath is long gone. I think there are condos or apartments there now.  

That night, I had dinner with two of my cousins and their spouses.  I hadn’t seen them since we were all children, so it was delightful to catch up.  The only downside was Sorges, the restaurant where I really wanted to dine, had closed a few years earlier.  It was where I had my first real Italian meal, spaghetti and meatballs, and it was sheer perfection. 

Then the next day it was rainy so my brother, who lives up there, and I went driving.  We went to look for our grandparents’ old house, a cottage on the shore of a tiny lake in the Finger Lakes region.  We found it, kind of.  It had been torn down and a new house was in its place.  

This was where, as a child, I could let my imagination run wild.  During the winter, there were hardly any other people living on that lake so I could hike and explore.  I could be a pirate, a pioneer, a spy. It was where I tried to write my first mystery using my grandfather’s old Remington rand typewriter.

But this was now a lake of tourists and second-home owners. The house where I’d grown up was gone.

The nearest town to that lake is Tyrone. It’s a place so small, there isn’t a stop light or a stop sign. There was one tiny store there, Ray Dann’s.  It was where we could get gasoline for the boat.  It was where I could get an ice-cold bottle of Coke and a popsicle. It was a place where you could buy bologna and bait, fishing lures and Wonder bread, tires and milk.  

It was closed.  The windows were broken, and the place was gutted.

On my final day, I drove past the house where my first wife and I lived. It’s on a quiet rural road. We were there when all three of our children were born.  It was so tiny.  But it was warm in the winter and let the sun in during the summer. It was where I would write my first published short story.

But as I drove by, the windows were covered in dark fabric, and No Trespassing signs were all over the place.  “Meth lab,” I muttered to myself as I stopped and stared.  Then I drove up to the corner to turn around and head back to my hotel.

Driving back past our old home, someone got into a black truck parked in the house next door.  They followed me until I got to the parking lot of a fire house where I stopped and recalibrated the GPS on my phone (all the roads were updated and changed).  The truck pulled up next to me, the window slid down, and a rough character wearing a doo-rag growled, “You lost?”

I explained that I lived there forty years earlier and was just looking around, gathering memories.

“Where you headed?”

“Back downtown.”

“Want directions?”

Dear God, no.  I held up my phone.  “Got them, thank you.”

Nope, you really can’t go home again.

So, I had a chance to catch up with two wonderful high school friends I haven’t seen in 50 years, had dinner with my cousins, and caught up my brother and his family.  I took a boat ride on Seneca Lake, walked down Watkins Glen, and tried counting all the wineries that have thrived in that region since I left, so many years ago. So, many wineries. 

It’s all changed.  As it should.  

The setting of my new book is in that region of New York, and it was good to see the places I’d written.  I’d gotten those right. 

And my old hometown, Dundee?  It quite literally looks the same. The school, the bowling alley, and the library, none of them were much different than when I left fifty years ago. Almost like something from a Twilight Zone episode.

Then I flew home, where I live now.  This is home.