Just a few miles east of the town nearest our own there is a sign. Not just any sign, this sign is a typical state highway road sign, arrows pointing off in various directions, in this case, two. The highway forks, and one fork of the highway, if followed far enough, will take the driver to Enid, Oklahoma. In this case the distance is just over 200 miles.

Enid is the closest to a hometown I've ever known. I grew up in a rather nomadic existence, shuttled variously between my parents and various foster parents until at the age of 18 I had visited more states than I had spent years on this earth, and I had lived in half of them. But somehow, I always came back to Enid, having spent 2 grade school years there, one junior high school year, and in an accomplishment I looked back on with some pride, all of my high school years. So it's where all the memories and stories of my somewhat checkered past lie.

But the 200 miles that separate me from Enid don't even begin to represent the true distance. In about 4 hours of driving, I could be walking the same streets that I know so well and lingering in the shade of my favorite "mystery monument"; the four Corinthian columns that surround the small "lake" at the local golf course (one day, I may post the story of the columns on this site as well; it's actually an interesting tale). I could be standing on the loading dock at the back side of the former community theater where it buts up against the abandoned railroad tracks, reliving the times and stories that formed so integral a part of my formative years. Or laying on the bank of the creek underneath a waning harvest moon listening to the strains of the angst filled tunes that were my solace through so many difficult times.

But that is a world from which I am so far removed. As Bob Dylan once so poetically said "I was so much older then; I'm younger than that now". That world holds nothing for me.

The number of years that have elapsed since my last sojourn in Enid number slightly more than a dozen. But those dozen years represent a lifetime of growing, of changing, of becoming so many things I never envisioned when, as an angry 18 year old in the early summer of 1988, I pointed my 1976 Oldsmobile Cutlass to the west and drove on to find a world outside of Enid. Happiness, to paraphrase an old country song, was Enid, Oklahoma in the rear view mirror.

I tried a brief return to Enid in the early '90's, as mentioned before, and even then noticed that the town was different, changed. Never once at the time had it occurred to me that I was the one who had done the changing.

And so today as I drive out to the east on my daily newspaper deliveries, I will once again see the sign. And perhaps once, someday in the future I will drive east along the inviting ribbon of asphalt that stretches out across the Texas plains as they give way to the wheatfields of Oklahoma. Perhaps one day I will drive "home" just to visit the spot where so many bittersweet memories will rise up to greet me.

Perhaps one day, but not now. For now, I will content myself with the knowledge that the invitation lies there, when I am ready to accept it.