I am driving past road signs bearing some of the most iconic place names in the U.S.: Valley Forge, Gettysburg and Hershey (which has a billboard that says, \u201cThe Sweetest Place on Earth.\u201d)<\/p>\n
Each is pivotal to a big American epoch: Revolution, Civil War, obesity. <\/p>\n
And I\u2019m driving through my own past. I\u2019m imagining my car is at the tip of a knitter\u2019s needle, about to close a very big loop.<\/p>\n
When I was less than a year old, my family moved from the Lansing area to Dayton, where my father got another job in radio. I grew up and went to college in Columbus. The first 20+ years of my life were spent mostly on the stretch of Interstate 70 in western Ohio. <\/p>\n
I have not passed through here since graduation day, 1992.<\/p>\n
That day, I threw my diploma on the passenger seat of my car and drove west. I remember the feeling of finally acting on a dream that began before I was eight years old. My teacher in 2nd-grade art class asked me why I always drew pictures of mountains.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s where I want to go,\u201d I said. And I lived in the West 15 years almost entirely in Colorado and the San Francisco Bay Area. The mountains remain, though, the place I want to be.<\/p>\n
But before I get there I have to cross the mid-West and the great plains.<\/p>\n
I wonder how much of this road I\u2019ll remember from my trip more than 18 years ago. Not a lot, I\u2019m guessing.<\/p>\n
But as I cross the Ohio line, I\u2019m starting to see road signs and place names that I know. <\/p>\n
As one of the professionally transient (we who take jobs and move across the country every few years) I haven\u2019t seen or heard much on the phenomenon of passing through old, familiar stomping grounds. There is a rush of memories. I expected that, just not this much.<\/p>\n
NCPR\u2019s web guy Dale Hobson would tell me, \u201cYou never step in the same river twice.\u201d But, if you\u2019re lucky, you can return to a well-known, comfy spot on the bank and reminisce. <\/p>\n
And then, once again, move on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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