in it but not of it

I’m having the strangest feelings lately.  Put it down to reading The Bitter Southerner on a regular basis, put it down to O Brother Where Art Thou running in heavy rotation on HBO, just put it down to aging and timing and the fact it was hot as hell all week. But when you find yourself blowing up Google Street Maps to full-screen on a 30-inch display and looking at the downtown streets of your former rural-exurban haunts, it’s a sure sign something weird is going on in your brain.

Moving from Nashville to the DMV to Silicon Valley has been a process of going further and further away from the home patch. With each move, the phrase “in it but not of it” comes ever more strongly to mind. College football was replaced by the NFL was replaced by baseball as the defining local sports fixation.  The local business went from country music to government to high tech.  And I myself became an ever greater anomaly, to the point where I am now as exotic and curious an attraction as you can find around these parts.

Part of that is a lack of local ties. I lived in DC for seven years and have been in Silly Con Valley almost eleven, but I didn’t go to school here – no Dematha or Roosevelt or St Francis or Gunn or Cal or Santa Clara for me – and I don’t remember things like Mayfield Mall or People’s Drug Store or the drought and fires of ’91 or the blizzard of ’96. Every place I’ve lived since leaving the old country is someplace where other people aspire to get to, and where true locals are frequently as not thin on the ground. Every place I go, I find myself in it but not of it. Including back to the old country.

Here’s the thing: I was born in the wrong place. I never fit in there. To borrow a line from the famous British traitor Kim Philby, “To betray, you must first belong. I never belonged.” And in the early 90s, that was as true as could be.  But now…you look at the food scene in Birmingham, you look at Railroad Park and the new Barons stadium, you look at the forthcoming electric bike share program, and you consider how much less expensive it would be to buy a spot in the Southside…

Could I do it?  Could I go back to the 205?  Beer at J. Clydes, whiskey at Dram, meats and brews at Bottle and Bone, season tickets for the Barons and completely punch out of college football other than maybe UAB? A place where Uber is actually a necessity in the absence of decent transit options, where you never have to wonder if a place will have air conditioning or not during a hot spell, where you still have internet access and Amazon Prime to cover your retail needs…

Four years ago I went south with only the family I chose myself for company, barring a quick stopover in Birmingham.  But for the most part, it was just me, the wife and the cousins, and I got to see the old country through completely different eyes. Sliding around the backroads in a big black rented Dodge Charger, honeysuckle aroma strong in the humid night, that sparse style of building in dying rural exurban communities, a world away from Silicon Valley and the things about it that drive me crazy…

I’m sure I’ll come to my senses quick enough, but for the first time – well, maybe ever – the old country is something other than a thing to be avoided at all costs. There are bits and pieces that resonate, that feel important to me, that deserve to be preserved and cherished. Creeping into an empty Rickwood Field to eat a couple of special dogs in the stands with a big bottle of Grapico, riding down barely-paved country backroads to nowhere in particular with a sack of Milo’s for lunch, hanging out behind the home bullpen with friends watching local girls try to holler at Barons relievers…there are things there worth cherishing and enjoying, and it’s past time I found a way to avail myself of the good without letting it be overwhelmed by the bad.