In reminiscing about my early start as a runner wannabe, I decided to go back and run the route that made me decide to give it all up after I had barely started. I grew up in Turley, or at least on the outskirts of the old rural town that was eventually annexed by Tulsa. I headed up there a little later than I had planned, and it was certainly going to be dark before I finished my run. I had bought two headlamps just in case the batteries were low in one, but the more I thought about running up and over Turley Hill after dark on the narrow winding road with no shoulder, I decided to just check out my old stomping grounds, and then run later a little closer to home.
Driving around through Turley and seeing what was still there and what had changed was really strange and unique experience. I felt a though I was driving through a deep fog—so dense you could just feel the air rushing by you although the windows in the car were up. The hair was sticking up on my arms, my face tingled, I had hot flashes and then chills. I drove the house I grew up in, and houses of old friends and by places that I’ve been before many times as a kid and I could feel an almost magnetic pull from those places—like a vacuum. I heard the horn of a distant train--not an uncommon thing at all back in the day--but that railroad track has been replaced by a pedestrian trail over ten years ago. I was tossed back into a time capsule, seemingly transported back to 1976 or so. I recognized every bump in the roads, even though most of the roads have been repaved. Some of the houses of old friends that dilapidated or not even there. Between the remains of a line of abandoned and decaying dwellings, I’d see new replacement houses that oddly stuck out like an avocado in an egg carton. Almost instinctively, I intended to stop at Smith's Grocery to buy a Dr. Pepper from the machine. Except-- Smith's Grocery is gone--been gone for 30 years or so. And I don't drink Dr. Pepper anymore. My old house and my grandparents’ house next door were hardly visible from the road through all the overgrown and unruly trees. The old barn between the houses that my grandfather built 75 years ago laid on the ground in ruins. My grandfather and grandmother would have been 100 and 99 years old this year.
I thought about all the school friends I used to have and how I have almost no contact with any of them. Most of my schoolmates are old. Yes, they are my age but they seem so much older. I don’t mean that in an insulting way—maybe it sounds like I do. It’s just that I still feel like a guy in his early 20s. Tell me its because I’ve never matured, and I won’t disagree with you.
I drove slowly south out of Turley. My mind, so cloudy feeling like I was in the 1960s or 70s, began to clear as I drove south on Lewis Avenue. At the T-intersection of 46st Street North and Lewis were three Quik Trips. One that was replaced in the early 80s by a new slightly larger one across the street. Then that one was closed and a new one built across the street by one that now is outdated as well. I have no memories of visiting the newer two, but tonight, the newest one had coffee and I needed it. Coffee, like it usually does every morning, pulled me out of the fog that I was in.
I stopped several times on the way home to speak my thoughts and feelings into the notes app on my phone. There’s no way I could have put this recounting up my trip without doing that. Strangely enough, my mind feels crisp and clear right now. Nostalgia really played with my mind--I’m not sure what to think about that. I don’t necessarily feel the need to to go back again, although I’d like to run the Turley Hill route again. I’m not sure how unpleasant the run would have been at night on the narrow unlit road with surreal flashbacks. I don’t know that I could’ve handled that too well.
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