A Backward Glance

by Janie Doe

 

            Each summer during the week of June 26th to July 3rd, my hometown’s biggest event occurs: the Anderson County fair. Complete with greasy funnel cakes, tacky games (with even tackier prizes), and a precarious Ferris wheel, it is an occasion that few residents of Lawrenceburg miss. I, of course, am the exception.

            After being bombarded by my friends’ pleas to join them at the fair and hearing about “how much fun it’ll be” and that “nothing else will be going on”, I shook my head in disagreement. I began to drown out their chitchat concerning whether or not they would get to ride the Ferris wheel with Thomas Jay, which girl would win the Miss Lawrenceburg Fair pageant, and what kind of drama would “go down”. That night, I sat at home alone, determined to skip the fair, and considered what my life might consist of in one month, when I would be able to escape my small hometown and move to Lexington to attend the University of Kentucky. August 11th cannot come quickly enough, I mused silently.

-          -   -   -   -   -   -   -

When asked to describe a community that I do and do not fit in with, my hometown of Lawrenceburg, Kentucky immediately popped into mind. While we are listed on a map of Kentucky and have more than one streetlight, I was always more than ready to move elsewhere, somewhere that I thought was bigger and better. My heart longed to be where the county fair was not the highlight of the week and where I could walk into a Kroger, a bank, a restaurant and not run into anyone that I knew. I desired a more liberal environment, compared to Lawrenceburg’s sea of conservatives and the ability to count the self-declared Democrats on one hand. My nickname was “Libby the Liberal Treehugger” among friends, simply because I agreed with gay marriage and was pro-choice, whereas the most extreme regulation recently passed in my hometown allowed restaurants and bars to serve alcohol on Sundays. I’m still patiently waiting for the outcries from various churches and Southern Baptist “bible-beaters” within my community to overturn that one.

One question that is always asked when meeting a new person in Lawrenceburg (a rare occurrence), is “which church do you attend?” For such a small town, different denominational churches are prevalent, although Southern Baptists seem to draw the largest crowds. However, no animosity or tension exists between any of the churches. Each year, Lawrenceburg holds various basketball, softball, soccer and volleyball tournaments between each church, creating many friendly rivalries to be the Championship Team. Though I participated in such events at a younger age, my interest slackened once I reached my junior and senior year in high school. In my mind, I had graduated from these activities and while my faith did not decrease, my attendance at church did. Many concerned friends would question me as I became a regular on their “prayer list”. In the meantime, I anticipated the day when I would not be held so accountable for filling a seat in the rigid-backed wooden pew each Sunday morning. My parents were one of the few who never badgered me about my religious views. Instead, they focused on what kind of grades I obtained at school, the kind of people I selected as my closest friends, and made sure I was always home when midnight rolled around on Friday and Saturday nights. Many of my friends were older than me, so the word “curfew” had become foreign to them as I lost track of how many “fun things that everyone else got to do” while I sat at home. I imagined the freedom that I would gain once reaching college and wondered about the kind of people I would meet and someday consider as my best friends.

My graduating class consisted of 260 students; we all knew each other’s first, middle, and last names, who was dating who, and what kind of reputation each individual held within our high school. (What would a small town do without vicious stereotypes and ruined reputations?) Drama and drunken fights from the weekend dominated conversation throughout the week, as I turned my nose up to anyone who asked me why John and Brittany broke up or who won the fight between Ryan and Blake. Hopefully pettiness is a quality that every kid eventually grows out of; I am still too young to know and only time will tell. With each day that passed, my anxiety to move to Lexington increased, along with my scorn of Lawrenceburg. I never expected to miss anything about my hometown (with the exception of my family and a few close friends) and took pride in that. However, life has a funny way of humbling all of us in some manner.

August 11th of 2007 finally approached, and I tingled with excitement at the thought of moving to Lexington and into the dorms with my random roommate. I was to participate in the sorority recruitment week prior to classes starting and would become active in the Young Democrats on campus; I would finally feel connected with a group who shared many of the liberal beliefs I did, who I could hold conversations with rather than judgmental arguments. My first night of college, I could barely spare a thought for my hometown as my roommate, Katie, and I sought out the local party, determined to stay out past midnight, giddy with our new-found freedom. We quickly learned that once classes started, we had to be mature and make responsible decisions; therefore, turning down a party invite when homework was weighing on our shoulders and being able to manage time wisely was crucial to our success as students. Additionally, campus life was not all that I had built it up to be. My eagerness to make new friends was not always shared by the people around me and I found that conservatives exist everywhere, even on UK’s campus! Within two weeks, I had accumulated two parking citations, and shortly thereafter I walked out to Woodland Ave to . . . not see my car; I later found it in the impoundment lot of Bluegrass Towing. I grudgingly paid the $150 fine and refused the idea of asking my parents for monetary help. I am an adult; no more running to Mom and Dad when the going gets rough, I decided. Suddenly, the dorm room was not quite as spacious as it had once been, wearing flip flops in the shower was necessary to avoid contracting some unknown foot fungus, and healthy food was scarce as I quickly gained three pounds. Maybe I put a little too much emphasis on how great I thought college would be and that my success is placed entirely in my own hands, with few people to catch me if I fall. Maybe in my eagerness to reach college, I missed out on the ‘little moments’ back in Lawrenceburg, I thought.

“Only Americans, conditioned by mass culture, could believe that it is possible to break cleanly away from such ties, from home, from family, from place; any place” (231). Fenton Johnson, a creative writing professor at the University of Arizona, made this claim in his essay “Notes of an Emigrant Son” in which he struggles to belong to his hometown in Kentucky and his desired community in California. I, personally, can vouch for his statement’s validity and relate to his predicament. Not once prior to moving to Lexington did I pause to wonder how college would shape me, aside from allowing me to escape a small town’s drama and a strict curfew. I assumed I would not spare a backward glance to the good life I had, as I looked ahead to the better life I would create for myself. However, I found it impossible to begin writing this essay until I was situated comfortably on the tan couch stretched along the wall of my living room in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky.

At home, I can hear the reassuring sounds of my mother cooking in the kitchen, as wafts of garlic and basil saturate the house. On my first night back from college, Mom enthusiastically agreed to prepare my favorite dish of pesto over penne noodles and pine nuts. I smile as yelps from the young neighborhood children playing on my old trampoline float in through the open windows; I will even go so far to say that I am a bit envious of their innocent youth and untainted happiness. Time seems to slow down in Lawrenceburg; one takes time to watch the wind blow through the trees and admire the petite hummingbirds that zoom up to the vivid red feeders, gulping down sugar water. I have yet to see a lightning bug come out at night on campus at UK; they are innumerable in my backyard alone, as scattered moo-ing can be heard from the farm just beyond our property.

 Later that evening, I make plans to catch up with a few friends from high school that I have not seen since my move to Lexington. Our average night spent in Lawrenceburg may consist of numerous activities: meeting up at the new Super Wal-Mart parking lot and driving down highway 44 to the highest point in Lawrenceburg, just to kick back and watch the sunset as a symphony of crickets serenade us. If that seems a bit too laid back, Lawrenceburg offers Graffiti Bridge, an old concrete tunnel caked with the signatures of former and present students of Anderson County High, Lawrenceburg’s one and only high school. One senior class threatened to paint the entire bridge with white paint as their “senior prank” as teenagers responded with their own threats about what would happen if they “erased all that history”. As we drive down the narrow, curvy country road (with the windows down and the music loud) at a speed our mothers would gasp at, we cannot help but to swing by the old cemetery for a late-night scare.

The town is vacant on Friday nights during football and basketball season, as the entire community is crammed into a stadium that is long overdue for a remodeling job, just to see how their sons or nephews or former numbers will perform on the field. The cheers of the crowd can be heard anywhere throughout town as the stadium lights are visible no matter where you might drive. Afterwards, we may head over to the Bob O’ Link Golf Course Bar and Restaurant for some late-night karaoke. Old country favorites like Conway Twitty, George Jones, and George Strait fill the air, mixing with cigarette smoke and laughter from people of all ages. Despite small town politics and petty drama, the community within Lawrenceburg desires a simple, good time with the company of friends and family.

            While my time in Lexington at the University of Kentucky has been brief, this “new life” has already humbled me. The small town that I once despised became my home after I moved away. Ironic, isn’t it? Fenton Johnson states that “for a generation which has spent its lifetime pushing westward, looking outward, perhaps the time has arrived to look inward and look back” (231). I can never escape my ties to Lawrenceburg, nor should I try any longer. In retrospect, I now see everything that I took for granted. In my eagerness to get away, I missed out on innumerable little moments that my high school, that my church, and that Lawrenceburg as a whole, offered to me. However, I feel that I have perhaps left my mark on my small hometown, whether it be my name spray painted on the walls of Graffiti Bridge or the friends and family I could never leave behind. Lawrenceburg has imprinted a mark within my heart, one that I will always carry with me as I continue on in Lexington and wherever else life may take me.