November 8, 2014 8:51 AM

Turns out you can go home again...it just doesn't look or feel like home

I knew I was back in northern Minnesota when I saw a sign in Bemidji advertising a “LUTEFISK AND MEATBALL SUPPER.” After not having been there since 1978 (I went back for what would have been my high school graduation), it all suddenly felt simultaneously familiar and very, very odd.

After my freshman year in high school (1975), my family moved from Walker, MN, south to St. Cloud, just north of the Twin Cities. I went from a town of 941 to one of nearly 70,000. My high school class, 45 strong in Walker, was a bit over 750 in St. Cloud. Over my three years in St. Cloud, I had an opportunity to feel as if I’d moved to the “big city.” Not only was St. Cloud significantly larger than Walker, it was only 70 from Minneapolis-St. Paul. Walker was closer to the Canadian border than St. Cloud. Situated about half way between Duluth and Fargo, Walker wasn’t the middle of nowhere, but I grew up believing you could see it if you stood in the stands at the high school’s football field.

The town I returned to was exactly the same and yet completely different from the one I’d left behind almost four decades ago. In the mid-70s, homes and businesses had no street addresses. They didn’t need any; there was no mail delivery (everyone went to the post office to pick up their mail) and everyone knew where everyone lived. In a town of 941 in far northern Minnesota, how could one NOT know where everyone lived? There were no stop lights (Why would there be in a town so small?) and only a few stop signs. Walker was in every respect a wide spot on Highway 371. There was nothing to see, and, unless you were a hunter or fisherman, even less to do. During the winter, you went to the bowling alley, you went ice fishing, or you stayed home and prayed for Spring to arrive.

Fast forward through the years, and Main Street has two stop lights- this in a town where you could leisurely walk the length of Main Street in less than five minutes. Every home and business now has an address…I suppose in case emergency services suddenly forgets where someone lives. What struck me as odd were the random things I remembered after so many years. I often can’t remember a conversation I had twenty minutes ago, but I remember our mailing address (P.O. Box 563), zip code (56484), telephone number (218.547.1706)…even the license plate number (MDO 405) of the Ford Fairlane station wagon that was stolen when I was nine. I remember the sound of basketballs bouncing on a hardwood gym floor and reverberating off the whitewashed cinderblock gym walls. I can remember what it felt and sounded like one winter day when the air temperature dropped to -54F. I may have left Walker behind, but it clearly hadn’t left me.

I remember how close-minded, ignorant, and pedantic I thought the people of Walker to be. I knew at a very young age that I was getting the Hell out of Dodge, because the thought of spending my life in Dogpatch made me ill. I didn’t know what I was going to do or where I was going to do it, but I knew I was leaving. Somehow. Some way. I began writing letters to colleges and universities in seventh grade, and I got responses from places that seemed exotic compared to the frozen wasteland I’d been condemned to grow up in. (Newberg, Oregon? Garden City, Kansas?) I might not have been able to immediately find them on a map…but they weren’t Walker, MN, and so they seemed just this side of Paradise.

Upon returning, I found that my problem wasn’t with the people of Walker or the town itself, toward whom I realized I’d not been very kind or charitable. No, the problem was me, and the people who populated my childhood were for the most part decent and well-meaning. I was so bent on leaving that I came to see Walker- and everyone in it- as the enemy, what I felt was holding me back. I’d hated the classmates who’d bullied me, and I despised living in a small town that seemed to offer me no hope or opportunity. I was desperately unhappy, but that had far more to do with me than the people I live with.

Going back after all these years helped me find some closure…in a manner I’d never expected or even knew that I needed. I was finally able to see Walker for what it was and always will be- my hometown. No matter how far afield I travel or how far I run, Walker will able be where I’m from. I’ve grown and matured enough to understand that’s a good thing. A very good thing. I’m the person I am in large part because I lived in Walker until I was 15. I became the person I was destined to be because of the good and the bad…and there was much of both…I experienced there.

It was great to be able to show Erin my hometown, to drive her around and show her the places that held memories for me. We went to the house that I grew up in…and I found it to be much smaller than I remembered. It was empty, but we were able to walk around and look in the windows, and I found myself remembering things with a smile on my face, something that probably wouldn’t have happened a few years ago.

We spent the night at the Chase on the Lake Hotel, something my family never could have afforded when I was growing up. It was something that I’d always wanted to do, but once we left Walker it faded from my memory bank. When I woke up in the morning and looked out the window of our room onto south shore of Walker Bay, I realized I was a much different person than the one who watched Walker disappear from view in 1975.

I have no desire to return to Walker on a permanent basis. I may want to go back sometime, but I no longer feel the need to do so. The 20 hours or so that Erin and I had there were what I needed to sort things out, and it was worth every minute. When we took the same route out of town that my family did in 1975, I felt…peace, something I hadn’t expected in the days before our trip to Minnesota.

My home is here in Portland, Oregon, but my hometown will always be Walker, Minnesota…and that’s something I’m proud of. Turns out you CAN go home again.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on November 8, 2014 8:51 AM.

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