I have an old joke I tell folks when they find out that I spent most of my formative years traveling with Mom and Dad when he was in the Air Force. Most times they ask me where I was born, and I say, Joel, he was born on Guam, Roger, well he was born in Massachusetts, me, I was born in Hemingway. Yep, at one time there was a hospital in Hemingway, but it’s been closed for years. And if I remember right it’s where the Food Lion’s at now. But every now and then when I pass through I think about that, that’s where I was born. Do you ever think about things like that, how different places are a part of your past?

Most of us at one time or another are asked where if we had the money, where would we go if we had the chance? Some would say Paris, maybe Italy, or maybe even New York City. Me, I would love to go back to the houses we lived in back so many years ago just to make sure it wasn’t all a dream, that at one time I did live there. You see once we left, we never went back, never have I passed there and said, “I use to live there.”

Once I went back to Savannah, and passed Hunter Army Air Field, back then it was an Air Force base, and as I passed the gate I had a feeling of coming home, but that’s as close as I ever got. But we couldn’t go in; I couldn’t see the house where I use to play. And to be honest even if I could, I wouldn’t even know the address. Even the kids I played with are like a mist in time that fades in and out. I only remember one name, and that’s because the folks kept up with his family through the years. But I haven’t seen him since 1964, so he too is just a memory.

We left Savannah in 1963, and made our way to Guam, and while I have better memories of there, it’s still so long ago. We lived on a house on a hill, seems like Guam wasn’t much but rolling hills. One family, The Wilsons whom we had known in Georgia were stationed there, lived right down the hill from us. The day Joby was born, Mom woke me up and told me to run down the hill and stay with the Wilsons because she and Daddy were going to the hospital to get me a little brother. I was about six at the time, but I can still see my self running down that hill to tell them about a new brother that was coming.

I have so many memories of Guam, the baseball games between the houses, the airplane inner tube Dad brought from the flight line us kids use to jump on, this was back before trampolines, and the typhoons. That’s what they call hurricanes over there. We even had one on Christmas Day one time. We loaded up our food and ran down to another couple’s house and had dinner, on Air Bases nobody had family there, so we were each other’s family.

While we over there, we were given a five-day vacation off the island, seeing how Guam was an isolation base, it was only twelve miles wide at its widest point and thirty-six miles long. My folks had their choice, seems like it was Hong Kong, Bangkok, or Japan. But they could only take me to Japan, so that’s where we went. It was on an Air Force plane, with box lunches and canvas strap seats, but I was in Heaven. And for the next five days I saw sights that you only see in travel books. Pagodas and strange people that didn’t talk English, and a train where they had people hired just to shove people in to get the most they could get on it. And something called the Tokyo Tower, if I remember right built to look like the Eiffel Tower in Paris. But all good things must come to an end. Before long we were back on Guam, and a year later we were stationed in Chicopee, Massachusetts, at Westover Air Force Base. We went from wearing shorts and flip flops year-round to blizzards. I had never seen snow before, that was just something on TV, one day I went to the movies, saw a Tarzan short, remember them, and a movie. When we came outside there was almost a foot of snow on the ground. We had gone from swimming on New Year’s Day at the Base pool on Guam, to sledding on the snow and ice at Westover. Seems like there was snow on the ground up there from October till April! Probably wasn’t, but to a little boy it lasted forever. But two years later we moved home.

That’s right home, because no matter where we went, my Granddaddy’s place was home, the place that never changed. I can still remember coming down the Georgetown highway that last time, and seeing what I thought was the Chinaberry tree in his front yard for miles away. Momma didn’t have the heart to tell me it was the smokestack at the Brooks Veneer Plant, most folks these days don’t even know where that was at back then. But we were coming home and that’s all that mattered.

I reckon that’s why when some one asks me where I would like to go if I had the money it would be the places of my youth.

I guess just to see if it was real and not some dream.

You can reach Robbin by e-mail at robbinbruce@yahoo.com.