You Can't Go Home Again. Or Can You?

We're getting ready for our flight to South Dakota tomorrow, suitcase on the bed waiting to be filled. But Squeakie thought she'd fill it first. I went in the bedroom and there she was, in the suitcase, sitting there almost pleading with us to take her along. Well, much as we'd like to, we can't leave Dusty alone. Besides, she'd probably never make it through the pre-boarding patdown.

We're both feeling ambivalent about this year's trip--excited to see people we haven't seen for a while, people we may never see again, and nervous about how hectic it will be, seeing all those people. Three different sets of reunion activities--my sixtieth, Rosalie's fifty-fifth, and the Pooley family reunion (all the nieces and nephews on the Zimmer/Pooley side of the family). It will, I'm sure, be another week of getting there and then wishing the days away until we can come home again. Way too much small talk, way too many obligatory meals at one restaurant or club or another, too many nights sleeping on an unfamiliar mattress with an unfamiliar pillow. I'd take my own pillow with me but the airline would probably charge me an extra hundred bucks.

How about a few Mobridge, S.D. photos?

Mobridge High School, where Rosalie and I spent so many enjoyable years. It was torn down this year to make way for a new one. All those memories now in the dumpster.

The old Travis house at 100 7th St. East, on the north side of the city park. I lived there from 1946 until I moved out to marry Rosalie in 1960.

Ah, yes, the West End Tavern as depicted at the Klein Museum. How many hours and how many dollars did I spend there? But I and a lot of other Mobridge males got our sex education there. Now it's gone forever, shut down finally by a group of Mobridge do-gooders.

The Mobridge Country Club, where I first learned the game of golf, a nasty little sand green course now converted to grass greens. Now that brother Dick is gone, I won't mind never playing there again.

One of the Oscar Howe murals that adorn the walls of the auditorium where I played my high school basketball games. This one depicts the agony of the Sioux Sun Dance, the one I used for the cover of my Mobridge novel, Match Play.

And finally, a shot of a Fourth parade, a parade I've seen too many times, almost always the same, small floats with children and adults tossing candy to the kids along the way, horses depositing steaming piles on the asphalt to the dismay of the viewers.

Who says you can't go home again? Thomas Wolfe, that's who. But he must have been wrong. Wasn't he?