CRYING WOLFEYou Can So Go Home Again
by Wendel Potter
February 20, 2005
It has become a cliché for a writer or a speaker to begin with, "As Thomas Wolfe once said, 'You can't go home again'."
Frankly, I have seen no hard evidence that Wolfe actually said that. It was merely the title of one of his novels.
To credit Thomas Wolfe with making such a singularly profound statement is like saying, "As Ernest Hemingway once said, 'The sun also rises'."
Now Hemingway was known to be a peculiar person, especially when he had been drinking (which was from 1919 to 1960), but I can't for the life of me imagine him standing around one day and suddenly, without cause, blurting out "Hey everybody! Guess what! The sun also rises!"
He wouldn't have been telling people anything new. Although, technically, the sun does not rise. Our tilted earth moves around it.
Frankly, or should I say Earnestly, Hemingway took his title 'The Sun Also Rises' from a verse in the Bible (Ecclesiastes 1:5). Which tells me that the fellow who wrote Ecclesiastes knew squat about the solar system.
Now as far as Thomas Wolfe is concerned, let him speak for himself. Granted, maybe he had a nasty personal experience going home again (perhaps he forgot where his home had been and, being a guy, he was too proud to stop and ask for directions).
But some people may have no problem going home again. It just depends on the condition of your home.
My hometown is Emmetsburg, Iowa where I was born back in 1952. My family lived there until I was 10 years old, but I've managed to visit there off and on in my memories ever since. In memory, nothing has changed.
My relationship with my parents and my siblings was formed in that town. I made my very first best friends there. I came to know God there and was baptized, made my first communion, and was confirmed in St. Thomas Catholic church in Emmetsburg.
They say that by the time children are six or seven years old, their personalities are pretty much developed. By that tender age, they are the people they will become. So it was in Emmetsburg that I became the person I am.
I briefly returned to my home town in 1972. As is usually the case, things didn't look quite the way I had remembered them.
The house my parents had built in 1953 seemed smaller and the tree in the front yard was much bigger. Of course, the tree really was bigger but the house was not smaller. It had only grown older. It was my memory that was bigger.
It was distressing to drive around town and find I was unable to locate some of my old haunts. Some shops and stores had closed. Many of the streets appeared unfamiliar. I drove down one or two that I found to be dead ends.
I was also dismayed to discover that the parochial school I had attended through third grade had been demolished. Fortunately, I still had my memories of the school and the nuns and my classmates. Those cannot be razed.
I haven't physically been back to Emmetsburg in 33 years. Only in spirit.
It was recently brought to my attention by an Emmetsburg city official that St. Thomas church is gone. The beautiful, ornate church of my boyhood and my spiritual development as an Irish Catholic was torn down several years ago.
I suppose that shouldn't matter. It doesn't mean God is gone. But unfortunately he, too, doesn't always seem to be as big as I remember.
A couple of weeks ago I happened upon the Website of a nationally popular cartoonist, Dave Carpenter. I knew a Dave Carpenter in my youth, back in Emmetsburg. He was older than me and was in my brother's class and his brother was in my class at that parochial school that now stands only in my mind's eye.
As I read the cartoonist's bio, I discovered that this was indeed the same Dave Carpenter. He replied to my email and told me that he still lives in Emmetsburg. He said that while some things have changed and many of the people my family knew are gone now, there is still a pleasant, small town ambiance about the community that we grew up in, where he resides to this day.
That's what it's about, isn't it? Not what buildings still stand or which people have left and who has stayed. But rather it's about the intrinsic values that were cultivated and still remain and the quality of life that has been sustained over the years.
So going home is not so much about going home. It's more about feeling at home once we get there.
Copyright 2005 Wendel Potter
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