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Showing posts from August, 2008

This Is Not Nowhere

When I was a child, I thought the ridge above my house was the center of the universe, the middle of everything. It might as well have been, as I had all that I needed there: trees, a creek, the sky, a pasture. Here I could run as fast as I wanted, or holler at the top of my lungs, go to sleep with my good dog Fala as a pillow, even pee outside. Basically, I could do all the things I could not do at home. As far as that goes, my little town had everything I needed, too. People who loved me, my school, the Laurel River, which supplied us with endless enjoyment (swimming, skipping rocks, ice-skating), my Aunt Dot's store, which was well-supplied with plenty of candy and pop, and so on. Occasionally we needed to go to Knoxville or Lexington, but usually only when someone was nigh death and had to be shipped off to one of the hospitals there. We cared nothing for malls or fancy restaurants or things of that nature. As far as I was concerned the only reason to go to the city at all was