“Interested in a little side-trip?” I asked.
We were cruising along I-44, from Oklahoma City, headed southwest, making good time, on the way to my hometown, Altus, Oklahoma.
My mom had died two days before.
“We may never pass this way again,” I added, as an incentive to take the detour.
“Just keep following me,” I instructed, a short time later, as the five of us, in two separate cars, were winding down old farm to market roads on the way to my grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ old home place, in Fletcher, Oklahoma.
Soon we were standing in “downtown” Fletcher, having arrived by a different route than I remembered. I was puzzled: the old landmarks seemed to have been erased. “I think Grandmother and Grandad lived… that way,” I said, scratching my head.
“That man over there looks like he might know,” my daughter, Mary, whispered, pointing to someone who looked like a long-time resident.
I caught him as he was climbing into his pick-up truck.
“Tom Harless,” he said, shaking my hand.
“Would you happen to have known a L.D. Whitlock?” I asked.
“Did I know him?” he said, looking at me like I’d asked a question every elementary kid should know. “Course I knew him,” he said, and then grinning, “My cousin bought his oil business not long before L.D. passed.”
Soon, his cousin, Steve Shifflett, arrived in his pick-up, and after introductions, took us on a tour of “Fletcher, America,” as Tom had called it.
“Jay’s Drugstore was right there,” Steve told us, pointing to a vacant building.
“I used to buy packages of Bazooka gum there when I was a kid,” I said, peering through the storefront windows, reminiscing about my visits to Grandmother and Grandad. “Grandmother would leave me at Jay’s while she shopped,” I continued. “She would tell the proprietor I could have a malt and a pack of Bazooka. I loved Bazooka more for the baseball cards that came with it than the chewing gum,” I chuckled. “And Dad told me how he was enjoying a malt there at the fontain on December 7, 1941, when he heard on the store radio that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. Dad gulped down his malt and hurried home that day,” I said, as we all walked away.
The little side-trip turned into a tour—complete with a visit to the cemetery where so many Whitlocks were laid to rest—to my grandparent’s old home, a look at the property where Great-Granddad’s house used to stand, and a visit to the shop where Grandad had his business.
“I remember racing from Grandmother and Grandad’s house to try and see the train go by,” I chuckled.
Glancing back one last time as we got back on the road, I wondered if I had opened a new chapter for my children, silently hoping they would claim this one as a part of their heritage, even as they shared their own unique histories.
Sometimes you don’t know if something important to you connects with people who are important to you.
I would get my answer a few days later.
Mary and Dave asked, almost in unison: “Can we take the long way back?”
“The long way where?” I asked, curious.
“Back to ‘The Cabin,’” they said, like I’d asked a question any elementary kid should know. “The Cabin,” was the name for the little cabin my mom and dad owned for years—where they would take David and Mary, our children, and at other times, the other grandkids as well—a magical place full of fun and adventure with Meme and Big Daddy.
“Of course,” I smiled, gratified.
“We may never pass this way again,” David said with a faint grin.
Some of life’s best memories are memories of memories: the unplanned side trips that bring us face to face with those places and people embedded deep in our history, covered over by layers and layers of days gone by, the past piled with years upon years, years that when peeled back, sometimes spout forth in joy, and other times, ooze with pain, but nonetheless, when courageously claimed as part of who we were, remind us of who we are, pointing us forward, along the road ahead.