Small Town

Thirty years ago I sat on the football field of my high school for my graduation. Today I returned to that field and took a seat in the stands to watch my nephew, Michael, graduate.

I guess you could say I grew up in a small town. There was a movie theater on Main Street, a drive-in just a little ways out of town and farmland that was slowly being bought out by developers interested in making money on all those families that wanted to move out to "the country."

Thirty years later the farmland is 75% gone. With the exception of a few dairy farms on the outskirts of town all that farmland I drove by as a kid is now commercially owned. It's not quite the small town I remember leaving 23 years ago.

I listened to the names of the graduates announced by my former Western Civilization teacher and was surprised at the last names that were so familiar to me. They were the names of my former classmates. Thirty years later they were somewhere in the crowd to watch their own children graduate from their alma mater.

What a small town feeling.