Home Base

In some odd combination of purpose and accident, I have spent a lot of time wandering, yet I still always come back to the place I consider home base. When my time in China ended, I returned to the cornfields of Ohio.

My hometown is still a place where post office workers and grocery store clerks ask about my family in unexplainable southern accents considering how far we are from the Mason-Dixie Line. It’s a town where music simply stopped in 1986, and the Eagles and CCR are still kings of the radio. American flags are hung from lamp posts during every summer holiday and a giant Ohio flag is painted on the grain silos on the edge of town. Teenagers ride along winding country roads with sunroofs down, trying to catch fireflies and bridge jump along dusty and deserted gravel roads.

I came home in the heat of August when the humidity thickens to the point of practically requiring swimmies. Just at that point thunder rolls across the horizon bringing the green skies and rapid fire lighting of some of the fiercest thunderstorms that I’ve seen in the world. When the rain clears, a mist lingers within the meadows so that only the tops of the wild flowers and tall grass rise above the haze.

Summer in Ohio also brings every possible festival imaginable besides the county fair. The summer holds the Strawberry Festival, Strut Your Mutt, multitudes of car shows and races, the Street Carnival, and maybe the most famous in my personal history: Balloon Fest, the hot air balloon spectacular.

My trip home was only for a month of respite. I will move from a teacher to a student as I attend school in London this fall to obtain a Master’s degree. When the year is over, I will once again return to the drive-in theaters, old-time carousel, and football obsession of my hometown.