This is not about politics, it's about me...

No, I'm not going anywhere, just a little tale of making a pilgrimage.  If you're not interested, go and watch the pretty badgers dance.

After having written about Weiner a few days ago, I realized that I had not been there in several years.  In fact, I've been there only once since we buried Dad seven years ago.  So, with a day off, I headed out for Weiner after breakfast.  Thanks to I-55 & what will be I-555 (US 63), I got there right after 12 noon, and drove around the town, winding up, of course, at my parents and grandparents' graves.

(Remember, you can always skip out; if you don't like badgers, here are some nice llamas.)

After visiting the graveyard, I drove around the town and it confirmed that little has changed in the 40 years since I moved away.  It remains the only town from which I moved that I cried about when I left; I never imagined that I would ever leave there.  Oops.

The downtown is little to nothing on the west side of the Cotton Belt tracks, as it has been since the late 70s; people either shop for groceries at Fowler's, or drive 20 miles to Jonesboro, as we did when I was a child.   After a while, I left and went to Jonesboro.

After a stop or two to get a magazine (football, people, FOOTBALL), I left to come home.  I stopped in Trumann to look at the house that had belonged to my family from 1973 until I sold it in 2005; the people who live there now had taken down the fences and chopped down the trees my grandfather had planted shortly after moving in.  Somehow, I didn't bother me; I drove on after a short pause.

I think of all I had in Arkansas that is now gone; yet it just brings home the fact that Memphis is and will be my home, it's where I have put down roots.

In the long run, that is a much-needed comfort.