I'm yanked back out of my reverie by a friend checking on me. I've pulled into the parking lot of a microbrewery, gotten out of my truck and instead of heading inside, I've walked blankly to the street and by all appearances am staring into space. I turn around and head towards the entrance, in a bit of a state of disbelief. The source of my fascination?
A Winchell's Donut Shop.
It has been there for as long as I can remember. The Osco (that was once a Skaggs if I recall correctly) that was down the street from it is a Big Lots now, and the 7-11 to the West is now vacant. The gas station on the corner where I remember learning how to fill up a gas tank when I was maybe 10 and playing some sort of scratch off ticket promotion for my Dad each time we stopped there is still there, but it likely has been bought and sold several times and is now a Shell station. I don't remember what used to be in the parking lot that I'm standing in, but if I look South I can just make out the Skate City that is still there.
So is that solitary Winchell's. It looks exactly like it looked when I was 6 and when I was 16. I can't ever remember seeing any Winchell's other than this one.
I've been back in town now for about a year and a half, and yet I've not thought to go back to where I grew up. I love where we live now, and wouldn't change it, but none of it is all that familiar. There wasn't that feeling of coming home when we moved here.
That Winchell's though. That felt like home.
After a couple of beers, my friends and I part ways. Both of them ask me separately if I am going to drive around a little bit. I'm wearing a wonderous countenance as we are leaving, and I am compelled to revisit the past.
I head towards the house that I lived in until I graduated the 6th grade. The first thing I notice is the old recreation center that I'd go to swim at maybe once a summer has become a Muslim Community Center. My eyes pull slowly forward to the library that I would walk to several times a week and lug back as many books as I could carry. I pass my elementary school and marvel at how the temporary trailers that they put in when I was there are now permanent fixtures. One of them was for art class, it always smelled like paint and paste and was messy and a little bit dirty and heaven for hordes of 9 year olds.
I turn right to pass in front of the school and head towards the house. I've only driven this route maybe 10 times in my life, and I haven't the slightest idea of the name of the street that I am nor the ones that I need to turn on, but the second I see the next turn my hand turns the wheel unbidden. I pass the lot where every 4th of July we'd go and watch fireworks, now of course filled in with a cul- de -sac and then turn onto my street.
Everything is so much smaller now, I realize. My street, which stretched for miles before, is itself a little cul-de-sac, the houses that seemed so massive seem tiny and rather plain. There is my friend Christopher's house, now adorned with a Nascar mailbox, and my friend Jason's house, with the long entryway and the massive solid front door looming at the end. I crushed my fingers in that door long ago, played in his tree house that is now long gone, and swam in his pool. The split rail fence that separates my house from the neighbor's is still there, and I can't swear to it, but the color scheme is still the same, and yet from the front there really is nothing that calls to me, that stands out. I stop at the end of the cul-de-sac and gaze upon the two lane street on the other side of the small greenbelt. Walking across that street was a big deal every day to get to school, which was a great distance to walk. Today I think even with my limp I could make the walk in ten minutes flat.
I head on, driving slowly from that house to the one we moved to when I was 12. I pass through neighborhoods, past my friend Rob's house where I know his Dad still lives and resist a strong urge to stop and say hello. I drive past Bill's old house, and Kyle's, and Anessa's, and Becky's. I remember helping her Dad put in a big two story deck one summer. I cruise past the the little shopping center where Ge-Jo's pizza used to be and past the big park that I could cut through before I drove to get over to this side. I get lost in my brain for a moment at a stop sign and I'm startled by the honking of a horn that gets me moving.
I remember when they redid Buckley Road to put in the massive medians that dominate the road now when the Pope visited Aurora and the angry letter I wrote to the Sentinel about it. I don't remember what exactly had gotten me fired up about it in the first place. I do know that the turn off of Dartmouth onto Buckley feels wrong somehow with that fucking median there.
I turn into the neighborhood of my former years. It's cramped, cars are parked on the street in front of almost every house. My house is still painted the same blue and white and it looks like a dollhouse. There's a tree in the front yard that must be 30 feet tall. I don't remember ever seeing it before. The driveway where I spent hours and hours working on cars, shooting hoops, smoking cigarettes, hanging out seems like my truck wouldn't even fit in it. I can see some of the backyard and the deck that my Dad and I put in is gone. That's probably for the best, that thing sat up way too high. There's a lady sitting on the porch of the house two down from mine staring at me so I head out.
South on Buckley towards Iliff, which I know will get me back to the Interstate. At the corner I see a sign for E-470 and an arrow East. That's new.
I stop for gas at a station I must have stopped at a hundred times before, that too is a Shell station now. I jump back in the truck and on a whim head East, towards E-470. I drive past the King Soopers, past another defunct 7-11, past the Taco Bell that I ate at every day for lunch during high school.
I pass my high school, still so imposing and prison like at the top of the hill. I marvel at how I survived three and a half years there what I now realize was 25 years ago. Out of everything, this is the one thing that seems like it is the same size as it was when I was a kid, and I wonder if there is something subliminal in that somewhere.
I head East, past Tower which was the point of no return when I grew up. It was all prairie past there to the Kansas border. Now it is one subdivision after another, although I finally see a 7-11 that is open and seemingly thriving. I drive so far East I worry that I missed the sign for E-470, but eventually it's there, in the middle of nowhere. A short journey into the past precipitated by an ancient donut shop has come to an end.
As I turn onto the tollway towards home, I realize that Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) is on the radio. As I listen to the lyrics I am smothered by a wave of melancholia followed by an odd, silent calm that carries me home as I reflect on how youth is indeed wasted on the young.
I used to think a lot about what I would do if I had to do it all over again. Tonight, looking back, I would just want to tell myself one thing:
NONE OF THIS IS AS BIG AS IT SEEMS RIGHT NOW.
Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road,
Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go
So make the best of this test, and don't ask why
It's not a question, but a lesson learned in time
It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right
I hope you had the time of your life
-Green Day
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