Thomas Wolfe wrote that you can't go home again.  I haven't actually read the book, so I didn't know how he arrived at this conclusion.  I just know that I didn't believe it.  At age 43, with two daughters, one cat, one dog, no husband, and a U-haul filled with the contents of our St. Louis house, I went home to Marshall, a small, rural, southern Illinois town, surrounded by cornfields and filled with memories, as well as my aging parents, who were beginning to need help.

Marshall is an idyllic place with little crime and a gypsy blessing that has protected it from tornadoes for eighty years. Legend has it that a Gypsy Queen passed through in the 1930's and was so taken by the kindness of the people that she blessed the town from ever being hit by a tornado. Although we might have picked prosperity if she had asked, it's been nice not to have to worry about tornadoes too. The Queen was later buried in the public cemetary with a gypsy funeral and a tombstone that diverts the tornadoes around the town.  The tombstone is a favorite bike destination, a sort of meeting place for pre-pubescents.

If the town itself hasn't always prospered, its' kids, with their almost unfettered freedom, have.   They live a child's life of Riley, blocking off streets to play kick over the goal, spending every day of the first week of August at the County Fair, and running unattended around the court house square while their parents sit in lawn chairs listening to the Friday night band concert. They play home-free-all across back yards until late at night, all day monopoloy games on front porches, and ride bikes alone--or with friends--to school, downtown, the swimming pool, Tastee Freeze, and sometimes--without telling their parents--to the next town over, nine miles away.  Occassionally they arrive at the town and discover that they're too tired to ride their no-speed bikes back.  After using the black rotary phone with a party line at the first farm house they come to, they sit on the stranger's porch, drink the sweetened ice tea that's always offered, and wait for dad to pick them up.  He doesn't lecture them of the dangers of riding alone on a state highway, but calmly tells them not to start something they can't finish because "next time you might find yourself walking home."  And next time they do.

With the exception of the out of town bike riding--which I didn't think they needed to know--this is the picture I painted for my city bred daughters before our move.  Although it's possible that I also neglected to tell them about the overwhelming preference for drinking ice tea instead of Coke.  And I might have forgotten to mention that people sit on porches because of a general lack of air conditioning.

They were having none of it.

"Is there a Gap?" was what they wanted to know.

"Not yet."

"A mall at least?"

"Not far away.  Right across the Indiana state line."

"In a whole other state!" they wailed. "What about a Target?"

"A little farther," I mumbled.  "But there's a great Dime Store right downtown.  You can ride your bikes to it and pick out your own goldfish with a little net."

This almost hooked Bess, my nine year old.  But she wasn't really the one who needed reeling in.  She was mainly following the lead of her twelve year old sister, Alex, who resisted nearly all change that didn't involve ear-piercings or age progressive privileges.  They had both spent some time in Marshall visiting grandparents and celebrating holidays.  And last summer Bess had come home with a twenty inch trophy that she won in a checker's tournament during the "Autumn Fest" that the town inexplicably held in August.  It didn't matter to her that there were only two people in her age group and that her trophy was for second place.  She was a collector, and Marshall beckoned as a place to collect more trophies.  

In that she wasn't wrong.  Over the course of our first several months in Marshall, Bess won a 27 inch TV in a local raffle and we gained two softball trophies, a bowling trophy, another checker's trophy, and Alex won a trophy for "Most Valuable Player" on her seventh grade volleyball team. She was still pretty humorless about the whole move and didn't see any irony in being the most valuable player of a team that didn't win a single game. 

But even if Alex had know beforehand about her trophy, I don't think she would have wanted to move.  I knew I needed another approach.  I thought the idea of a new house might help since she had recently moved her bedroom in St. Louis down to the basement in order to avoid sharing a room with Bess. 

The houses in Marshall are mainly frame and unimposing, but interesting, with porches for sitting, sidewalks for roller skating, and wooden screen doors that slam shut as kids run in and out.  A few are dwarfed by old and towering brick Victorians that once took up whole city blocks and that still carry the names of the original owners.

The Scoffield house is one of those houses, and sits directly across from where I grew up.  If another town legend can be believed, it was originally built by Judge Scoffield who turned down an appointment to the United States Supreme Court because he couldn't bear the thought of leaving Marshall.  This so surprised the nominating President that he travelled all the way to Marshall by train to see what could be so special.  I don't know if he ever found out, but I do know that he didn't stick around.

By the time I was old enough to play outside, the Scoffield house was covered in shabby shingles and inhabited by a family with five wild kids who had to stay outside all day becuase their mom taught piano lessons inside.  I'm not sure why I thought this was so strange since we all pretty much stayed outside all day any way, but at least we had the option of going in for ice water or skate keys.  I rarely saw the mom, but I often heard her yell when one of the kids would try to sneak in the back door for a ball, a bat, or a quick trip to the bathroom. She finally came out when the oldest boy accidently impaled his little brother's foot to the ground with a pitch fork.  Rather miraculously, it hit no bone or major tissue and the little brother survived to go outside the very next day.  Another town legend for the Scoffield house was born.

I didn't tell Alex and Bess this story either.  But I did tell them about the house we were moving  into, which wasn't big enough or old enough to have a name, but  was at least twice the size of our two bedroom cape cod in St. Louis.  And I told Alex that she could have first pick of a bedroom and that, after Bess picked hers, they could each pick one more, since the house had five.

Although they still weren't convinced, they were weakening.  The promise of new bikes as soon as we arrived got them into the U-Haul.  It was time to go.

When we turned off of Interstate 70 and onto Marshall's main street, the girls immediately started looking for all the kids on bikes that I had promised.  We didn't see any.  We didn't even see any kids playing outside. And we didn't see a single person sitting on a porch. 

"Probably a little too rainy," I offered.

"Then why aren't they having toothpick races in the storm gutters like you said they all do when it rains?" demanded  Bess.

"I'm not sure.  We always did it."

The next day, before unpacking the first box and before going to Wal-Mart to pick up the promised bikes, we drove around a little more.  Still no bikes and still no kids outside.  Not even any past evidence of kids--no chalk hopscotches on the sidewalks, no bikes in yards, and no fading "Lemonade, 5 cents" signs.  I was beginning to doubt my memories of a kid's life in a small town.

But we bought the bikes anyway and the girls spent the day riding circles in the driveway hoping for other kids to ride by.  As nightfall came they put  the kickstands down, moved the bikes by the back door, and we all  went to bed with open windows and a light breeze not quite as refreshing as I remembered.

The next morning I woke up early, hot and sweaty, and went outside to get some fresh air and a couple of boxes.  I noticed that something was different and soon realized that the bikes were gone!  As I'm running around the yard looking behind trees and under bushes and in the garage, a next door neighbor who I had gone to high school with ambled up.

"Lookin' for something?" he asked, with no introduction--as if 25 years hadn't passed.

"Our bikes!"  I yelled.  I'm tired and kind of frantic and not as friendly as I should have been. "They were right by the door last night when we went to bed and now they're gone."

"Probably stolen," he offered.  "Happens a lot."

"What?  This is Marshall!."

"Might wanta lock em up next time. Might wanta close those windows at night too. The fair was in town last week.  Lotta flies buzzin around."

"What?"  I'm becoming indignant.  "The fair wasn't in town!  It's only June!  The fair doesn't come until August!"

"Comes in June now."

I might have scared him a little because he started heading back towards his house.  But then he turned slightly and, as an afterthought--or maybe a forewarning-- said quietly, "Welcome home."