…there’s no place like…

Margaret McCracken

This series of personal sketches was drawn from the ‘hometown memories’ of students in response to watching Lowell Blues, a short film by Henry Ferrini based on readings from Jack Kerouac’s written recollections of growing up in Lowell, MA.

– Fred Bouchard, Associate Professor of Liberal Arts

 

I walk the same way home from kindergarten every single day. Left, walk straight. Left, right, straight, curve left, then straight on home to my goldfish and sprite. Home. Running free and wild. This is the world. The big world. Mommy will help us make beautiful pieces of art. I will draw, paint, glue, create. This is fun, but I can’t sit still. This is a big world and I’m a little girl. I want to run, jump, play, sing, scream, dance, explore. Mommy wants me to finish my drawing, but I am done – I don’t want to finish. I run to my garden. Ivy on the ground, trees in the air, me on the lone cinderblock, my dog on the other side of the fence. Mommy knows where I am, but she lets me be. She doesn’t like the garden, she thinks it’s too cluttered, but I’m happy here, I like the mess. It’s comforting.

Spinning, spinning. Up up, down down. “I want the prettiest horse!” my friend cries. I really don’t care, as long as I’m not in those silly seats. The seats don’t go up up, down down. It starts. We pass the capitol, Smithsonian castle, the pencil, the mall, and the museums on our majestic, paint chipped, fading horses. Faster. Capitol, Castle, Pencil, Mall. Capitolcastlepencilmall. So fast! Up up, down down! Up down! Up…and it stops. Again?! Mommy says no. We go to history museum, there’s an ice cream parlor there – a fancy one, with glass bowls, pretty booths, and the man behind the counter wears a funny diamond shaped hat. we get to pick out whatever we want! Yum! That’s not all though. We run through the museum. I’ve seen it before, but that doesn’t matter. Wait! The dollhouse! The big, beautiful dollhouse with a teeny tiny family. I wonder what it would be like to be that small. My little mind remembers the goal. My tiny feet scurrying as fast as they can, bumping through the hoards of tourists. I see them! The ruby slippers. I ask if they are the real ones, I always do, as if something might have changed from the last time I saw them. Mommy tells me they are real. I look down at my feet, and examine my ruby slippers. They aren’t the real ones though, I know because the red glitter gets everywhere – Mommy doesn’t really like that about them. I look up, then down. I know what to do. I click my heels three times, and whisper so quietly that I’m not even sure I’m actually talking. “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.”

Water. Lots of water. Hurricane Isabel. The neighborhood has found refuge at the neighbor’s house. I’m in the basement with the rest of the kids. The power hasn’t gone out yet, but we stole the solar lanterns from everyone’s yards, so we’re prepared. Madden is brought out. They go for the touchdown and they – the power goes out. Controllers go flying. We don’t stop though. My friend grabs a football. We run. The parent’s have migrated to the porch across the street. No one can stop us now. The game is continued in the middle of the road. Wind is everywhere, we can hardly stand. Running, running, throw! The football flies backwards. Interception! Touchdown!

Grandma drives me home from school every day. Up and down the GW parkway. We start in Arlandria, then past DC, then home. We follow the edge of the Potomac River, zooming past the monuments. Seeing all of DC from a Prius. I’ve seen it all before though, I don’t really care. Grandma talks a lot, but I don’t mind. Some days I zone out. I’m a middle schooler – I’m too cool for this. Some days I realize she won’t be here forever – Those are the good days, the days I ask questions.

Water. Lots of water. Three feet of it in the basement. The couches float. The TV is still on. Everything is gone. Home videos, gone. Pictures, gone. My toys, gone. Not everything is ruined, but it’s pretty bad. The summer of growing up fast.

I can’t breathe. The smoke from the fire manages to find me, no matter where I sit. It’s okay though. We reminisce. All seventy of us, crammed around a fire. “You all are such beautiful people!” we cry together. End of high school. End of piggyback races to class, naps in the hallway, classes at Starbucks, and painting on the wall. I realize that I went to one of the few schools that encouraged the defacing of school property. Everyone else has realized this too –High school is going to be so hard to explain to all the new people we will soon meet. We laugh.

Next week I go to college. Mom has been helping me pack since June though, so I’m all ready. It’s my last day of work. Nanning. Three boys. Six, eight, ten. They love to run and jump and scream and play. I take them to DC. We walk up to the capitol. “you’re right, it is big!” we sit, eat lunch, and I take in sights. Won’t see this for four, maybe five months. We walk back to the museums. I freeze. The carousel is being taken down. Reasons run through my head. Maybe they take it down in the winter…no, they’ve never done that. Maybe restoration…I hope. I force myself to keep walking. I’ve promised the boys a treat. They love military history, so I’m taking them the museum. We go in the exhibit, pouring over everything. We have some spare time, so we go to the cars. We finish that. I look at the clock. Twenty minutes until we have to leave. We have time. We go upstairs, scurrying past the tourists. There they are. The ruby slippers. “are they real?” I smile and nod yes. I look down at my feet. I’ve outgrown my ruby slippers, so my sneakers will have to do. I click my heels three times, and whisper so quietly that I’m not even sure I’m talking. “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.”