Used To Be

There's this Pretenders song called "My City Was Gone." Chrissy Hynde sings about going back to her hometown, Akron, Ohio. She laments, "My childhood memories, Slowly swirled past, Like the wind through the trees." I heard her sing this song as I was running around the streets of my own hometown. I was there on vacation. A visit to check out the place where I was from. The place where my family still maintains an outpost. 
I thought a lot about that song as I went looking for landmarks and locales that had been replaced by new points of interest. There was no Arby's. The one that was left when I left a year ago has become a Wendy's. I suppose that's not the kind of thing that would get Chrissy Hynde upset, but it stuck with me. For a while. 
And then it was gone. Because Thomas Wolfe wrote a whole book about it. And before that, way before that, Heraclitus said, "You cannot step in the same river twice." Something about the way water rushes on and fast food franchises spring up where another one used to be. He probably went looking for that gyro shop where he used to work. 
Or maybe he was just struck by the way the streets started getting these odd dips and turns. When I was a kid, you could go north and south, stopping at lights or stop signs, but there was no need to jog slightly to the left or right to continue on your way. Perhaps in an effort to slow punks like I used to be from racing down residential streets, these divots were installed to inhibit such vehicular behavior. A pause before resuming, perhaps. A motor comma.
And yet, there were still plenty of things that kept me content. Not the least of these was the drinking water. I spent a great portion of most days hydrating because of what came so lovingly from the tap. That was great. And so were the people. My mother and her endless supply of patience for me and her bottomless jellybean dish. My loves from the past and present nearly converged as a group. And that was like going home again.
Which is what I was doing, with or without Chrissy Hynde's approval. There were definitely places that had become parking spots and parking meters where I used to park for free. No free parking. No beef 'n' cheddar. But somehow I got around to the places where I used to be.