Tag: home

My hometown

“Home is not a place … it’s a feeling.”
—Uncredited bit of wisdom I picked up years ago.

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“So, where’s home,” asked the man whose hand I was still shaking. A mutual friend had just introduced us as we all met for lunch at a local restaurant.

“East Texas,” I replied with a smile. “I live in Center, but I grew up in Mount Pleasant. I claim them both as my hometown.”

Even as I said it for the umpteenth time, that statement still sounded somewhat unusual. Odd that I’ve had a Center mailing address through a dozen presidential terms, and while my home in Mount Pleasant years ago was a fourth of that, I still call it my hometown. And what about the various Texas communities where we lived before settling in Mount Pleasant to stay when I was eleven?

Someday, I’ll examine the paper trail in a cardboard box full of evidence of my parents’ pilgrimage from the time before my own memories began. A collection of letters, receipts, car registrations, repair bills, church bulletins, report cards, and black-and-white school pictures.

It wasn’t until after my mother’s death that I realized she had amassed this veritable family history in her cedar chest. I guess I owe her thanks, or maybe the blame, for my own tendency to hang on to similar seemingly worthless pieces of paper.

My family’s last move to Mount Pleasant was just in time for me to finish fifth grade at South Ward Elementary. But evidence in Mom’s hoarded documents hints at previous addresses in Ballinger, Muleshoe, and Midland. Plus, Pampa up in the Panhandle.

My first and oldest cognitive connections from around the age of three or four are of Pampa. I also remember Crockett where we lived next and where I entered first grade. A move to Seymour, Texas, followed where I completed third and fourth grade, and all of fifth grade except those last few weeks spent in Mr. Mattingly’s home room in Mount Pleasant.

So, I contemplated, what really qualifies one place over another as “my hometown?”

To me, it’s where our heart was first grounded. Places we associate with the “firsts” in life, such as our first friends. Friends remembered from fifth grade in Seymour are tall, skinny Joe, with whom I played basketball at recess. Mike, a neighbor I rode bicycles with to the park. And Carolyn, the first girl I exchanged valentines with in fifth grade.

Many firsts became memories in Mount Pleasant. Some with those end-of-the-year fifth graders from South Ward when we graduated from high school together seven years later. And some of those graduates who became college roommates and long-time friends beyond high school.

First dates, first jobs, my first car, and house—those memories all began in Mount Pleasant.

“Home is sometimes a place you grow up wanting to leave and grow old wanting to return to,” I added to the lunch conversation. I thought about Mount Pleasant, and how after college, I tried to plant roots there twice. But that path just wasn’t in the cards.

I took the path more traveled, rooting in Center many years ago. Enough years to see my children begin school and make their first memories. Enough years to amass many friends and loved ones, and to lose some of both. Enough years to have tasted happiness and to endure heartache.

And even enough years to see good eating establishments come and go. Which is where this missive started. Over lunch.

“So, while my home has been in Center for most of my life, I also consider Mount Pleasant my hometown,” I concluded, thinking about some of my “trips home.”

I return occasionally. Navigating new highways and bypasses makes driving more stressful than it was when I learned to drive there. And, though the old streets are familiar, the places and the faces have constantly changed over time. while the memories of “firsts” linger there like it was yesterday.

“I never thought about having two hometowns,” my new acquaintance offered as we worked on chips, salsa, and sweet tea.

“Yeah,” I drawled. “I think home is anywhere we leave a piece our heart.

“Because hometown is not really a place … it’s a feeling in the heart.”

—Leon Aldridge

(Photo info: My youngest sister, Sylvia, on the front porch at 206 Redbud Lane in Mount Pleasant, Texas, “home and hometown” to me and my sisters Leslie and Sylvia. There is no date on the photo, but I’m guessing about 1962 or ’63. I have no clue what she was modeling on her head. It may or may not have had anything to do with what appears to be Easter baskets behind her. The house that was our home is still there today, but it’s been extensively remodeled and doesn’t look the same as I remember it. Sylvia moved to her eternal hometown December 14, 2023. )

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2025. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

Slowing the pace of life

“Uninvited, he sat down and opened up his mind,
On old dogs and children, and watermelon wine.
— song lyrics by Tom T. Hall

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Those finer things in life celebrated in song by the American singer-songwriter nicknamed “The Storyteller” admittedly possess powers soothing to the soul. But my most trusted tool for slowing the pace of life was, for many years, something a little different.

My grandfather’s rocking chair.

I never knew where the piece of furniture came from. It was relegated to the front porch before I was born. It’s origin was one of many things I’ve wished I’d quizzed my grandmother about. I had a long list of questions for her, but many remained forever unanswered that October day in 1993 when she closed her eyes for the last time.

The plain wooden rocker with arms and a homemade red oil cloth seat cushion resided on their front porch along with the high-back cane rocker Granny called hers.

The chairs appeared to beckon them to the front porch every evening after supper with some sort of magical power. When John Kennedy occupied the White House, he taunted the value of rocking chairs as therapeutic for back problems. But for my grandparents, I think it was more than that.

My father’s parents settled in northeast Texas long before Kennedy was president. In fact, when they moved into their Cypress Street residence in Pittsburg on Halloween night, 1930, Herbert Hoover was in his second year as president. The railroad brought them to Camp County. Granddaddy worked for the Cotton Belt. He retired in the early 1950s when steam locomotives were still an occasional sight.

So, it’s probably not just coincidence that the small white frame house where they lived most of their life was across the street from the railroad tracks. Or the fact that his chair was perfectly positioned to spot approaching locomotives.

Rocking, talking, and occasionally singing hymns like “Blessed Assurance” were regular activities every evening. And waiting for a passing train when Granddaddy would glance at his pocket watch to see if it was on time. If not, he might declare something like, “The 6:15 is running a little behind this evening.”

My grandfather died in 1967, and with his death, regular after-supper porch sitting also ended. My grandmother lived in the house for another 26 years before joining him, but I don’t recall her ever using the rockers again.

Infrequent use and dirt daubers started were taking their toll on them by the time Granny moved the chairs inside to the living room.

After she died, my sisters and I out picked a few things for memories. Both rocking chairs went to my Hill Country back porch, where they once again waited for evening company.

My occasional “rocking and thinking spells” were mostly monitoring Hill Country sunsets. But when north winds caused Granddaddy’s old rocker to sway gently on some days, I saw him occupying his chosen chair. I was certain more than once that I caught a glimpse of a curl of pipe smoke rising above the brim of his hat.

The first night they spent at my house, I settled into his chair and began to rock. I relaxed and wondered. Did the old chairs really possess magical powers? Maybe, but my grandparents’ life seemed much more manageable at “front porch time.” My rocking was more intense when I consulted the chair to work out details of earning a living, rearing children, and other mindful matters.

Things like, “Dad, I need a new dress for the banquet,” or “Dad, the pickup’s making a funny noise and steam’s coming out from under the hood,” were always met with the same answer. “Give me a half hour and meet me at the rocking chair.”

Over time, the rocker became tattered and a little worse for wear, but I couldn’t bring myself to replace it. Changing anything about the chair would change its appearance, and most likely its powers as well I feared. For that reason, both retained their “as is” condition while I continued rocking and pondering.

During a move back to Shelby County a couple of decades ago, the relic rockers suffered crippling injuries. Consequently, they were confined to storage intended to last only “a few weeks.” But I never located that rare “round tuit” to b ring the back to life. Sadly, they still rest in storage, waiting for their resurrection.

With a little spare time on my hands, the rocking chairs crossed my mind last week. Maybe it was strains of “Blessed Assurance” reminding of their wait for attention. Or perhaps it was catching “old dogs, children, and watermelon wine” on the radio.

Really, I’m thinking it was just the same song my grandparents heard when they rocked in the evenings. The one calling them from the complexities of a hectic society. Wishing for that simpler time in life they remembered.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are published in these Texas newspapers: The Center Light and Champion, the Mount Pleasant Tribune,  the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, and The Monitor in Naples.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2024. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.