An Open Letter to LaGrange

Day 10/40

Yes, it seems odd to write a letter to a place. A place cannot laugh or cry at my feelings or thoughts. But there are places that have built us from the inside out, whether we like it or not. And there are many places that built me. So without further ado, if my hometown could read, these are some things I'd want it to know:

Dear LaGrange,

You saw a lot of me stand in your wind before I was even born. My family has been here for an American millennia. You've seen their struggles and their triumphs long before I was an idea in anyone's mind. They plowed your land, grew plants and animals on it. And now many of them are buried beneath the same soil that dirtied their hands.

You were a home for them. You were their familiar face. And you were that same entity for thousands of other souls before you were for me.

Sometimes I'll stand at the corner of Main and First, looking across the street at the courthouse yard and wonder how many lives have trotted through. How many people came out of that courthouse feeling defeated? How many walked through the dirt when the trees were just saplings on their way to church? How many businesses occupied these buildings before the ones I've come to know and love? It's like I can hear the carriages rocking, the horses trotting down the street before anyone ever thought of paving it.

There's a charm about you I can't explain. Like when I find myself here my lungs are clearer, my dimples slightly deeper.

And I've spent a lot of time in your atmosphere. Before gas cost your soul to buy, I spent many evenings driving circles around your backroads. I'd listen to the songs my Dad had on CDs in his old Volvo, alone but never lonely. It's like everyone I've ever loved is in the air.

My grandma owned a fabric store for a moment on the second floor of the old hotel on Main Street before I was born. I didn't know that until after I had my senior pictures taken right beneath the stairs that led up to it. It's whimsical things like that which keep me stuck like a child's handprint pushed permanently into wet pavement. 

I used to promise that I'd leave, go far away and never come back. "California," I remember myself saying - I'd never even been there, it just seemed like the farthest away I could possibly get. There's something about teenage angst that makes you swear you'll leave home. But some of us never do. Some of us never can. And while I live a little further down I-71 now, it's only by necessity.

And now you're becoming something new. People are flocking to you. New roads are built. There are several roads I grew up looking at through a backseat window that have turned from two-lane roads into four-lane highways. I remember the way the sun used to dribble through the trees and into the sunroof of the car, a natural strobe light on the back of the headrests. Now it's wide open. I remember fields that used to have thousands of fireflies hovering around in mid-July that have now given way to tire stores and factories.

I wonder if your whimsy will be too withered away by the time my children are my age. I wonder if neighborhoods and shopping centers will crowd out your charm before they get to see what you're really made of. But cities grow like people do, it just takes a little longer. And I'll always be proud to call you my hometown.

And in case you didn't know, people are calling you the "Kindness Capitol of Kentucky." I think that's pretty special. You were always so kind to me.

-Bekah Oldham