A Bittersweet Homecoming

Yesterday I took a walk around Idabel and did not find much pleasure. Everywhere I looked, I saw boarded up empty buildings. Grand Leader Department Store-closed. S&H Department Store-closed. Main Street and Central were dotted with empty shells of space or spaces that have survived in a new incarnation. The State Theater, where I had my first job, is now a law office; the boutique next door a funeral home; the old bank the new City Hall--I am not sure what the old City Hall now is. My childhood home--gone and replaced with a drug rehabilitation center, Piggly Wiggly grocery is an Choctaw Nation casino. Two former churches are now funeral homes in addition to the aforementioned boutique. In fact, it seems that death and vice are the only thriving businesses in town.

Home after home are morbidly similar with their sagging roofs, chipped faded paint, boarded windows, satellite dishes, and big dogs tethered (I hope) in fenceless yards. This is where I grew up. The town looks like a former debutant fallen on bad times. She no longer has the energy to get herself gussied up on Saturday night. And when she does she digs through her closet she finds of out of fashion tattered dresses. Her wrinkles showing and her mended shoes glaring. No one tries to look too closely because to do so is painful.

When Werehauser came in in the seventies, there seemed to be a lot of promise. But the veneer of that promise has worn off and my hometown is faced with the reality of low education, little industry and a dependence on gaming revenues, welfare and government subsidies. The only buildings that do not show marked signs of disrepair are those supported by gaming or social welfare.

I feel like a stranger here and I am. I am an anomaly to many and to others I am the one who got out and made something of myself. Coming home is always bittersweet. To see the one time potential drained of the town as Walmart moves the heart away from the center and leaves a swath of disuse and disrepair. I realize that town after town across the U.S. are undergoing similar events and I am devestated. I feel that our hearts, our ties are being fragmented.

Tight knit families have spun out of contact with the busy business that is now our pattern of life. I ask about cousins and other relatives that I grew up with and am answered with "I have no idea what has happened to them". I am no better. I will see my older brother for the first time in 5 years today. My life is alien to his and his family almost strangers. We use my mother to keep tentative bonds. What will happen to us when she is gone? Will I find my way back to this place? I don't know.