Tallahassee has things that didn’t exist when I left, like half of Blair Stone Road, the Brogan museum and SouthWood in its entirety. I took a wrong turn on campus and got hopelessly lost – when did they redo FSU?
It’s mostly familiar, though. When someone tells me the place I need to go is “off Riggins Road,” I have to close my eyes and ponder it before figuring it out.
It gets complicated sometimes, like when there are street names I remember from Michigan. I hear “Jefferson” and I think “how far from the fist?” and then realize that’s the wrong state. I no longer connect “Woodward” with campus but Foxtown and the Dream Cruise.
I think I know something, then it turns out I know it from another time and place.
That’s happening with people, too. I haven’t haunted around Tally in a long time, but I keep seeing people who look familiar. As it turns out, I look familiar to some people, too. At an event at Cush’s a few weekends ago, this woman selling tickets at a raffle swore she knew me. Instead of saying, “That’s impossible. You couldn’t have been 12 when I left the state,” (which was probably true) I played along.
“Oh, I’ve played softball forever,” (fat chance, since my last 10 or so seasons in Southfield, Michigan, of course).
“Maybe you’ve seen me at church,” (my former Tallahassee church hasn’t existed for at least a decade.)
Basically, it’s just a façade. People try to make me look like I belong here, and I just don’t. I’ve been back a year, but gone so long it’ll take much longer to return as a local. I play along, but something’s just off in that department.
Occasionally, I think I spot a familiar face and I get enthused, ready to rekindle a friendship. Then I get closer, I realize the person merely reminds me of someone from somewhere else, like the time I swore I saw Chuck Klonke and then realized I was in the wrong state for that. (Especially since Grampa doesn’t fly.)
I keep seeing people who remind me of Moroccan friends, too. I did a double-take, thinking I’d seen Amina, my program manager. When I realized it was impossible, it made me sad.
It’s not likely I’ll ever get back to those places, and my chances for seeing these folks in the flesh is gone. It’s not nostalgic; it’s just weird.
On the way home from Cush’s, I had a similar encounter. With Mackenzie in the car, my mom and I headed back to Havana on 27.
Just past the cemetery, I started wondering if Mackenzie had ever seen the house where her father grew up. I asked and she said no, so I hung a right at the light at Faulk (which wasn’t there when I grew up) and drove down the hill to 2139.
My mom had driven past it before, recently enough to see the new family had Volkswagon buses, which she found funny since my father lived and died by the fried-out Kombie as well as the 1969 Beetle.
I drove past it, noticing that there was a guy in the yard. We turned around in what used to be John Labie’s house (which had a for rent sign in front of it) and decided what the heck, we’d get out and show Mackenzie.
She, being 10, embarrassed easily and didn’t surface out of the car the whole time, which turned out to be awhile.
I climbed out first and walked to the front door, calling hi to the man I’d seen. Turns out his name was Ryan and he and his wife Bonnie had bought the place a year ago. They said it was in terrible shape (I’d heard it’s a former HUD house) and had spent the year fixing it up.
And honestly, it hasn’t looked better. Bonnie, a young mom of four (I’d be surprised if she and her husband had seen 30 yet) was sprouting plants and had fire ant-proofed the yard.
Zippy talked to her and explained that my father had built the extension and said we were trying to show a shy Mackenzie the room where her father climbed out the window in order to avoid a butt-whoppin’ sometime during his adolescence.
We got individual tours of the yard, which included FOUR VW buses (one was for sale, as was the Plymouth (?) minivan). Ryan said he crawled around in the attic and discovered some VW engine parts and knew he’d bought the right house.
It’s weird going back. Everything is vastly different, but so much the same. The boxwood hedges that bordered the property line are HUGE, and the ditch we had running through the property is now somehow county property even though the owners own both sides of it. Some weird law – they can’t even have anything on their property because it’s an official cut through.
There’s an above-ground pool and soon there will be a chicken coop. The huge stump that was outside the back door (deep in concrete) is gone, as is the overhang where we, at one time, had a swing.
Bonnie and Ryan, who had previously lived as missionaries in Senegal, gave us individual tours and we met up in the kitchen, which is completely new. Honestly, I couldn’t even envision what it used to be like because it’s totally redone.
After trying to focus, I came up with the fact the refrigerator is on a different side of the kitchen than it was. Now, the stove and sink are there. It’s just weird, but in a good way.
Going down the hall, I could see my old bedroom, the big place in the floor where my father took out the oil heater or whatever it was and put in a hardwood floor. Just as when we lived there, you could tell the new floor.
Looking around and then closing my eyes, I could visualize … nothing.
Really, not a thing. I’m not sure if I blocked it out, but I couldn’t come up with many memories of the house.
I tried to remember, like when I dropped the scissors on my foot and it bled and bled. I remember that happening in a closet (not a clue as to why) but can’t think back to the moment itself.
Not everything’s been blocked: I told Ryan about the time Bandit, the ugly terrier, for about a week kept jumping into the dryer and barking. Fool dog, we thought, at least until my father pulled the vent out and found a family of squirrels living there.
I remember there being a way to get under the house from the study (which wasn’t a real study; it was a cement room) hall going to the garage. Scary place. I remember opening that one time and finding a squirrel tail collection, courtesy of my cat Cleopatra.
It was fascinating, really, to go back to a place that’s no longer yours. It was very detaching, not at all like the song “The House that Built Me.”
From time to time, I had wondered about one thing in the house, though: what we called The Thing Panky Built.
This Thing, built by one Haskell Panky, divided the living room (I guess it would be – where the front door led to) and the dining room. It was probably 6-8 feet long and four feet tall, with pillar things from the top to the ceiling.
I have no memory of the house before TTPB, although I do remember Panky (as we called him, a friend of my grandmother) taking us for ice cream then eating it as we visited the Sparkling Water (as we called it) in Monroe, La.
Somehow, it materialized at the house at 2139 Faulk Drive and became an important reference. Things were usually found either in, on or around “The Thing That Panky Built.”
The wood was stained dark and it smelled like varnish.
It, more than anything (and for what reason I have no idea) is the one thing that I’ve wondered about at Faulk Drive.
Did the new owners appreciate it? Did they sniff it? Did stuff disappear in it? What on earth did they call it, anyway? They didn’t know Panky, or eat ice cream with him, so how did they even know what that thing was?
So, as I entered the back door, no longer obstructed by a giant tree stump and without an overhang to fear falling roaches, I curiously craned to catch a glimpse of TTPB, perhaps hoping to take another sniff.
And it’s gone. Ryan told me it wasn’t there when they bought the house. It just went away, I guess, which kind of makes me sad.
Without it there, it was even harder to try to come up with a memory of the living room or dining room, but without TTPB, it just didn’t make sense.
It’s about the same thing as those times when I run into familiar people: I get a little rush of adrenaline and hope to light a little fire in my heart somewhere.
Instead, it turns out it’s wrong somehow: not the right person, place or thing.
And it leaves me a little empty.
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