Hometown

My youngest son is 3 ½ years old. He is full of life, hilarious and a country boy.  Everything he likes, it’s because HE likes it, and we have not pushed any of this on him. Hell my Husband and oldest son have no idea about the stuff he likes!! Yes, we listen to country music, but we listen to a variety of other music too. He asked to listen to a Jason Aldean CD before bed one night over a year ago and from then on he was hooked. He LOVES Jason Aldean and pretends to be him. Maybe he will change, maybe it’s a phase and I know my teenager prays every night that it is but for right now he just loves everything country from cowboy hats/boots, trucks, tractors, guitars, camo and dirt roads. So I decided to take him on a little Field Trip and show him what all these Country Music songs are about. I took him on a little road trip back to my hometown. 

My hometown, Stillwater, it sits on river banks; its small there is one blinking traffic light. There is a lot of history in that little town. There is one little strip that takes you through the entire Village in under a minute. It is not commercialized, there is no grocery store. My favorite part of my hometown is what I brought my son to see. It’s what I remember and love about the place! It’s the land, the farms, the river banks and the back roads. If you are not from there and just passing through you would never know where to find all this beauty.

So, off we went. Straight through the Village down the “flats”, memories start swirling in my head, especially as we passed the Sod Farm and Wrights Loop. I wanted to step on it because that’s what we did, raced each other down the “flats”. I take a turn as I wanted to stop by Saratoga National Cemetery.

It’s such a beautiful and peaceful place. We walked around a little bit and then sat a few minutes near my Grandfather’s space. I told Tanner that the name on the wall was my Pop and then he put his 2 little hands over his name. I felt like they were meeting for the first time. It was kind of an amazing feeling.

We get back in the car and start our little journey. I amazed myself at how well I remembered all of these back roads and my way around. However, I did spend A LOT of time on them as a teenager. The sun was shining it was a beautiful day. We made many stops along the way. We saw so many horses and their babies. He loved it. I showed him the greenest grass and biggest fields he has ever seen.

We stopped and looked at cows and he was screaming “Hi” out the window at them! We saw several tractors but to his disappointment they were all RED! We had the windows down and he said “It smells like a farm”. We found Silos and managed to even find a dirt road. All the while driving around we only passed 1 car and 2 people walking. The beauty of back country roads! Lastly, we took a look at the river.

On the way back towards town, I was thinking of all the things I did as a teenager in that town. The days on the river, the late night bonfires sitting on the tailgate of a truck, putting it in four wheel drive and driving through the corn field to find the perfect spot to hang out all night, walking deep into the woods somewhere because that’s where you could hide from the police and drink your beer, walking through the woods in the dead of winter to find that lil pond that froze so the guys could play hockey, taking late night drives just to look at deer or the time we sat on the side of the road and watched a cow give birth.  

We are almost back to the Village; we make one other stop, St. Peter’s Cemetery. I walk over to my best friend’s grave. Her name is fading away and I just stare at the dates, 1975-1993. I brush off the little bit of dirt and tell her she will never be forgotten. It's heartbreaking that she never got a real headstone. I then realize this August will be 20 years since she left me. I also in that moment say a little prayer that neither one of my children have to feel the kind of heartbreak I felt, losing my best friend when I was only 17years old. 

We head back through town and he is hungry for lunch. I said "OK, in the next town over, I know the perfect place and you can get ice cream too if you eat all your lunch". So Tanner and I ended our Field Trip at Bubbles!!  Perfect!!