The Road Home

I have a lot of memories of Darren. There aren't many days that go by that I don't reference the Okie from Muskogee at some level. I should also point out that one of Darren's chief annoyances was that Merle Haggard had never visited his hometown before he wrote a song about it. I know how deeply connected he was to the wide open plains of Oklahoma. He was proud. And he was lonely.
Part of the reason we became friends in our freshman year of college was that we could not abide by our assigned room mates. Along with another like-minded pal, we forged a bond of laughter and forgetting. The three of us would meet up in the hallway after dinner and we would keep each other company as we navigated the uncertain path of that first year of higher education. They looked at me with mild disdain as I hopped in my car each Friday afternoon and drove a hundred miles back to my home, where my family and girl friend were waiting. Couldn't I just stick around for one weekend?
I never did. I heard stories about the debauchery that took place on our wing while I was gone, and I shared my own about the adventures I had in my home town. I must have been persuasive, since eventually, I managed to get Darren to come along. By the time Spring rolled around, he was making the trip almost as often as I was. By the next fall, he had decided to transfer to the University of Colorado with me.
We got an apartment, found another pair of roommates for the other bedroom, and we set up our bachelor pad. Life was a giddy adventure for a month or two. Then one day I came home from class and found Darren in our room, lying face down on my bed. If he had been drunk, it would have been part of the plan, but instead when he rolled over, I could see that he had been crying. Then it all came out in a rush: He really wanted to go home. He had been on the phone with his father, and he was taking a long weekend to drive back to Oklahoma. "I just need to be home for a while," he explained.
And that was the moment that we stopped being friends in that hungry drunk boy way. Now I understood that part of him that was just like me. He was as connected to the place where he grew up as I was, and his batteries were in need of recharge. When he came back the next week, he regaled me with tales of the three days he spent in Muskogee: curb parties, cruising in the Dyno-Buick, having dinner with the 'rents. It wasn't anything special, but it was incredibly important. We didn't talk about what brought all that travelling on again. We didn't need to. We were friends and always would be.