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March 30, 2012

ON THE ROAD - GO HICKORY


... a brief detour from our ride along i70 to st. louis, we stopped in knightstown, indiana, to visit the gym where the movie "hoosiers" was filmed ... to be honest, i thought this was going to be a rather dry experience, expecting to find in a tired midwestern town an old gym which had been merely one of many stages used in the filming of a movie that is, at best, a rather fictionalized account of a real event ...

... but, after our friendly guide, who had played seventh-grade basketball in the gym, and the little old lady who every so sweetly warned him, "they haven't got all day, so don't tell 'em all your stories," i found myself totally charmed by the setting ... a small town, no longer home for those who farm "small," one from which its children are now bused great distances to more financially efficient "consolidated schools," a town which would be well within its rights to give up and accept that fact that america has moved on ... but ... but, at least for those residents who manage the gym, there has been no surrender ... rather, in a most humble fashion they've taken the offense against "bigger is better" and new automatically supersedes old ... to visit this gym is a reminder that there was a time when hard work was a virtue, "friend" was someone with whom you enjoyed being squeezed onto a seat on the bus, and on a friday night "community" found definition in being crowded along a set of creaky wooden bleacher benches ...


... thomas wolfe said, "you can't go home again" ... adult maturity is coming to the realization that, for the most part, his dictum was correct ... but ... but, here in this tiny gym, if only for a moment on a warm spring day, it is quite possible to briefly believe that you can go home again, and, listening to the  squeaking of sneaker soles on polished hardwood floors, in this short respite find a most welcome exception to wolfe's rule ...

NIKON D200 & OLYMPUS E-PL1