The Time Machine
Yesterday I pulled the trigger on the plane tickets, the car, and the hotel.
I'm going back to my home town for my fortieth class reunion.
I'm not sure how this can be true.
After all, I am still a young man,
at least somewhere in me I am.
And when I get there, there will be a bunch of old, fat, wrinkled people
who will probably act and talk just like they did
when we really, actually were young.
My old home town has not changed that much either.
Progress is a very slow train in small town America.
You don't knock down perfectly good depreciated buildings
to build brand new undepreciated shoddy shells
just because it makes sense according to the tax code.
No, you use the building until it just can't be used any more.
In this world where progress marches to a different drummer,
I suspect that the things that I will be talking about this weekend
will not be that different from the issues we talked about then.
We will talk about people, each other, our parents, and maybe
a little about our lives, our real lives.
A few will talk about the giant wind farms that are now planned
for the area, and how it will help rejuvenate the economy.
A few will remember my first wind project there
Where I first sold electricity to the utility 27 years ago..
I suspect that virtually no one there thinks much about climate change,
or resource depletion, or their President on the War Path.
I'm going back to my home town for my fortieth class reunion.
I'm not sure how this can be true.
After all, I am still a young man,
at least somewhere in me I am.
And when I get there, there will be a bunch of old, fat, wrinkled people
who will probably act and talk just like they did
when we really, actually were young.
My old home town has not changed that much either.
Progress is a very slow train in small town America.
You don't knock down perfectly good depreciated buildings
to build brand new undepreciated shoddy shells
just because it makes sense according to the tax code.
No, you use the building until it just can't be used any more.
In this world where progress marches to a different drummer,
I suspect that the things that I will be talking about this weekend
will not be that different from the issues we talked about then.
We will talk about people, each other, our parents, and maybe
a little about our lives, our real lives.
A few will talk about the giant wind farms that are now planned
for the area, and how it will help rejuvenate the economy.
A few will remember my first wind project there
Where I first sold electricity to the utility 27 years ago..
I suspect that virtually no one there thinks much about climate change,
or resource depletion, or their President on the War Path.
(Even though Jay says I will be pleasantly surprised)
I suspect that only a few will have their computers with them.
The businessmen will have their palm pilots of course,
and many of the women will have their Rolex watches on.
Perhaps a few will know what a blog is,
But only one or two will read them or get their news from the web.
Many of them, like me, left when they were young,
and they moved to places like Dallas and Houston.
But quite a few will still be living in the area, in Amarillo,
or perhaps in Lubbock.
Last January, Stone Phillips had a segment on 20/20
about our football team, our beloved Fighting Harvesters.
Friday night, I will see the old green and gold
for the first time in fourty years.
And they will be, like me,
transfixed in a time machine,
that moves in the slow deliberate beat,
of each eternal moment of time,
through the soft warm glow
of our immortal ageless hearts,
I suspect that only a few will have their computers with them.
The businessmen will have their palm pilots of course,
and many of the women will have their Rolex watches on.
Perhaps a few will know what a blog is,
But only one or two will read them or get their news from the web.
Many of them, like me, left when they were young,
and they moved to places like Dallas and Houston.
But quite a few will still be living in the area, in Amarillo,
or perhaps in Lubbock.
Last January, Stone Phillips had a segment on 20/20
about our football team, our beloved Fighting Harvesters.
Friday night, I will see the old green and gold
for the first time in fourty years.
And they will be, like me,
transfixed in a time machine,
that moves in the slow deliberate beat,
of each eternal moment of time,
through the soft warm glow
of our immortal ageless hearts,
.
and our timeless transcendent minds of light.
Labels: personal philosophy
posted by oZ @ 9:20 AM
1 Comments:
The post script will be interesting. I hope the BBQ is good. At my reunion there were a lot of people who were in wheel chairs and had walkers and the hell raisers were not drinking and some were "Born Again."
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