Moonflower Road

I drove by the old 2 story beige colonial tonight around midnight.  The driveway looked like a parking lot and the American flag was out.  Some things never change.  Though Dad always brought the flag in at sun down.  "It's respect" he used to tell me. 

The gospel tent was up on the corner of Moreland and Meetinghouse.  I'm pretty shocked that that lot is still empty... all the other farm land around started disappearing in my early teens and is now all housing developments and schools and stores.  Not this corner.  I like that it's still there.  Store fronts change names, fences go up, new traffic lights get put in but the north west corner of Moreland and Meetinghouse is still just an open field that houses the gospel tent a few weeks every year.

I'd forgotten what it's like to drive around semi-aimlessly at night..... car windows rolled down and heat coming through the floor vents.  A wet day and somehow reminding me of an early October night.  An early October night in August 1999.  My timeline is severely skewed.  To confuse me more my radio station is stuck in October 2011 and I smell skunk from sometime in 1985.

I drove by 1991 on Saturday though it didn't bring back the flood that tonight did.  Under the "love and affection" bridge, up the hill, and there on the right, the Auto Zone.  The gray brick wall is the only recognizable part of the old music store.  I reminded myself that the little teaching studios in the back are gone as is, most likely, the blue commercial carpeting that ran through the place.  No more guitars or amps or anything familiar and to walk in that building or the house I grew up in would surely ruin my memories.  I don't like change, though I accept it.  I want the pictures in my head to stay just the way they are.

Terwood used to be my favorite road to ride down on full moon nights.  Back before cars had daytime running lights that you couldn't ever turn off.  Dad's maroon boxy Dodge Aries used to be so clumsy on the hills and curves... and the deer.... I'm lucky that my experiences with them along that stretch of road were always just almosts.

Nearly three years have passed since I've visited any of these places.  I don't mind if I never go back again.  If I close my eyes, I have a clearer vision of home than my drive-by tonight or any other night will ever give me.  Not to mention I wanted to beat down my mother's door and yell at them for forgetting the flag out and unlit.....