Long Road Home

As I was rolling down that long black ribbon through the early morning darkness Tuesday morning, I heard another one of those songs on the radio.  You know, the ones that talk about going home, or the long road home, or going back to the way things were at home.  It got me to thinking about the roads I've traveled and got me wondering about where I am going. Where have I been? Where am I going? What roads do I need to take to get there? What will I find when I get there?

I have traveled all of the interstate system in the continental United States with the exception of about 150 miles. My career has allowed me to travel the entire width and breadth of our grant land and grow to appreciate every part and what it means to the tapestry of the USA. I have seen the sun rise majestically on the Atlantic coast, driven into the gales of a storm on the great Gulf coast, braved the harsh winter winds of our northern border and watched the sun quietly set serenely into the Pacific Ocean.  Do you know what it really means to see the "spacious skies" of Montana, the "amber waves of grain" in Kansas, "the purple mountain majesties" of Colorado, and "the fruited plain" of California?  Niagara Falls has destructive yet beautiful power, yet a high mountain river has the unique ability to calm and comfort. A dry desert wind can sting the skin and a blizzard can destroy your sight but when they stop the landscape is changed and brings about a new beauty.

Home, where is it? For the purpose of this narrative it is where I grew up, where I was raised, the place I am  going back to someday.  Home is great friends, my old fishing buddy Steve, my sweet neighbor Twila, my renewed friends thanks to technology. It is the place of my birth, the place where I spent time with my family both blood and extended. It is a place where I drank coffee with Uncle Odell and Aunt Ann, where I fished in the bays with My Uncle Martin and my cousins, where I climbed the fire tower with my Uncle Herman. It is that place that formed my soul and my being. It is the old elementary school, the Baptist church, The Old Place, the marinas and fish camps. It is where I would walk out on the railroad bridge by the old creosote plant, where I fished at the foot of the highway 90 bridge. It is "The Singing River", Mary Walker Bayou, the Mississippi Sound, the salt water that courses through my veins. It is a place that existed before there was a "Salt Life".

The West Pascagoula Creosote Works

The day is coming when I will return, the day when I will rest, the day that I know I have arrived "Home". I will sit upon the beach that I played on as a child, a beach that I have introduced to my children. I want to float those back waters again. I want the peace of knowing the familiar. I get glimpses of home each time I pass through on my way to another place. It is breakfast with a friend, a gathering of family, fun times with high school pals. It is remembering the fun, the struggles, the enjoyment of all that was growing up in our own small town.  I remember when going to a big city was all about Biloxi, Mobile, or that grandest of all big cities when I was growing up, New Orleans.  All roads lead you somewhere and I have traveled a lot of them. But for me, the destination is home, it is the Mississippi gulf coast. All these ribbons of asphalt and concrete will bring me there someday. A day that cannot get here soon enough.

My friend Steve Bennett and I 1981