Big Dummy’s moving day

This weekend Big Dummy said good-bye to Chattanooga. It was a good run while it lasted: The hiking, the boating, the fishing and wandering in nature. The mountain edged sunsets and lunar eclipses. The downtown: the river and walking bridge, bars and clubs, the Scottish fired eggs and boccie. The crazy houses up in the hills covered in junk. The Church of God with Signs Following

One last drive, one last box, one last look, one last drink.
One last to last him.
Back he is plunged into the old hometown. The place most of us struggled to get out of since birth. The blue collar crap town that just got it’s first Starbucks (inside it’s first Target) as the population dwindles and the pollution grows.

Big Dummy calls me. He knows I’ll understand. It’s not so much the going back. A town can be a home where you already have friends. And a job is a career when you’ve been there so long. It’s leaving a place you love, not knowing when, or if, you’ll be back again. I felt the tug as he said it. My heart breaks along an old fault line as I remember leaving Oregon.