June 1, 2026

On Memorial Day morning this town got a break from the storms that drenched us on Sunday. Dark clouds still billowed overhead, as if reflecting a mixed mood of reverence and sadness, indifference and hope.

The ceremony at the Greenville County government building was moved indoors because of the threatening skies, a standing-room-only crowd packed into a conference room. At 10:00 AM a lineup of local leaders sat facing the throng. The program identified them, city and county officials and people from various civic groups.

Memorial Day, by revered tradition, isn’t a political occasion. We gather in public places to honor the fallen. Speakers don’t push candidates. We want to leave uplifted, reminded of the eternal debt we owe those who didn’t return. That is how it has always been.

Things are different this year. The country has been infected with partisan politics. One baseline: Trump pardoning people who trashed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. He is still flogging the stolen election lie.

Just that week I finished Laura K. Field’s Furious Minds (Princeton University Press). She dissects the intellectual origins of Trumpism, or the “MAGA New Right.” Field, a scholar at George Washington University and American University, lived in the New Right world and plumbed its depths, starting with the thinking of German political philosopher Leo Strauss (1899-1973) and of his scholar-descendants, and the lawyers, political charlatans, fanatics, and misogynists who signed on with the Trump cult. 

Field writes: “Conservative intellectualism … had all but vanished from the discourse that dominated the Republican Party. Champions of the U.S. Constitution … were now sympathetic to a man who obviously cared very little for constitutional niceties.”

“Eventually,” she points out, “Trump’s and the New Right’s lie about a stolen election became orthodoxy on the right and … took the shape of a ‘New Lost Cause’ myth, the recitation of which became a (bizarre) symbol of patriotism.”

Kevin Warsh, Trump’s nominee for and now-confirmed chairman of the Federal Reserve, in his Senate hearing, declined to acknowledge that Trump had lost the 2020 election, saying only that “this body certified the election.”

I thought: it’s Memorial Day, give it a rest. But then it occurred to me that for millions of Americans, MAGA, “make America great again” conveys a powerful messianic appeal, a mystical vision of an America that has never existed. That vision has enticed evangelical Christians, respectable businesspeople, and veterans to vote for a draft dodger convicted of sexual assault who bankrupted six companies.   

For our many years in Virginia we attended Memorial Day observances at Quantico National Cemetery. The event always was well-planned, polished, reverent. Hundreds attended. Speakers were senior Veterans or Defense Department officials and the commander of the nearby Marine Corps base, who spoke eloquently about the virtues of service. A Marine band detachment played stirring tunes. A sharp squad of Marines executed the 21-gun salute, a skilled bugler played a reverent Taps.

Our first Memorial Day in this city in 2021 went differently. The ceremony took place in a park, a small crowd gathered. One fellow sang the national anthem. He seemed rusty with the lyrics. Someone gave a short talk, shuffling handwritten notes. The event planning and execution clanged oddly. I guessed, well, this is a small town.

I showed up for Memorial Day 2026, the theme being dedication of a new veterans’ memorial outside the county building. I snared a seat near the front. The chairman of Greenville County Veterans Affairs welcomed us. An American Legion honor guard presented the colors.

We recited the pledge, a young girl led us in the national anthem. We then did the “pledge to the flag of South Carolina,” which I didn’t know and had never heard of.

The county council chairman offered brief remarks. He introduced the guest speaker, a local historian. He gave an interesting talk, reminding us that a lot of Revolutionary War fighting took place in the state. Francis Marion, the famous “Swamp Fox” was only one of the local heroes.

The chair introduced the head of a local chapter of the SC Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). She spoke at length about her work identifying veterans, living and deceased, for inclusion in the new memorial, clearly a labor of love for her. The council chair then called up the ladies from the DAR and other patriotic groups. One by one, in their flowing colonial-vintage dresses, they marched up and curtsied. We applauded politely.

A white-haired fellow stood, surprise, U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham—not on the program. The chair introduced him. Graham moved with practiced skill to the front of the room and picked up the microphone.

The crowd, veterans and family members, and others came to honor fallen heroes. Reverence and remembrance were on our minds. As an Air Force veteran, a retired colonel who served as a judge advocate, Graham certainly would fit the bill as a guest speaker who could raise our thoughts to those who did not return from fields of conflict.

Graham said not a word about Memorial Day, its noble theme and sentiments. He moved back and forth across the room. He talked about the war with Iran, the evil mullahs “who hate us,” the Iran attacks on shipping, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

We’ve read Trump is trying to put his war and its slaughter of civilians and worldwide economic chaos behind him. Graham took a different tack. “We have to be ready,” he said ominously. His voice trailing away, leaving a dark thought hanging: the troops over there may have to keep fighting and possibly dying.

Graham is running for reelection. The ceremony crowd surely were his people. A few hands clapped tentatively, but most stayed silent. His grim talk landed with a thud.

I thought of Field’s book, which calls the role of Ivy League professors, podcasters, political operators, and fundamentalist Christians who came around to Trump when they saw him as a kind of tool. Graham signed on after the 2016 election, after voting for independent candidate and anti-Trumper Evan McMullin.   

Someone up front announced, “We’re adjourned.” The officials stood and moved into the crowd, everyone hoped to see the memorial before the heavens opened again. Outside, folks studied the inscriptions on the marble and snapped photos. Some touched the engraved names. Together, in silence, they remembered.

May 25, 2026

A weed-filled backyard, partly hidden by an unpainted wood-slat fence, occupies a corner lot along a busy street in Greenville, South Carolina. A mile away, a vacant lot is surrounded by an ornate wrought-iron wall. A short mile from our neighborhood are homes built with lovely second-floor decks. Not far away, a dark thicket of bamboo conceals an old farmhouse.

Over five years in this place, driving these streets, I never noticed any of this. But last week’s melanoma operation meant no exercising that would risk tearing the stitches. No stretching or raising arms above shoulders. No running or jogging. So the choice is walk, or do nothing.

Our small neighborhood in Greer, a Greenville suburb, is a loop. Two dead-end streets merge at the subdivision entrance and run in parallel for a half-mile. Three trips around the loop come to about a mile. A few folks jog the course. An elite runner pushes his daughter in her stroller as he flies by. You can rack up miles by going around and around. But walking the loop gets old.

Like lots of suburbs, Greer is a mix of residential streets and vestiges of farmland waiting to be bulldozed, set off by low-rise office buildings and strip malls. There’s a small downtown with a few boutiques, coffee shops, and restaurants. Stretches of townhomes border patches of woodland also waiting to be turned into subdivisions.

Carrying a water bottle, I left our street and slogged along the fringe of a busy thoroughfare. Suber Road is a straight shot to a primary intersection, the red and green of the signal are visible a mile distant. For the first hundred or so yards there’s no sidewalk or shoulder, I stuck to the south side, walking along the edge of peoples’ front yards. Traffic roared by.

It’s an old saw, but walking may create a mystical or cosmic experience. The walker watches and even counts his or her steps, feeling the rhythm of pace. The staccato foot-pounding, the gradual, evolutionary closing on a target, the short, panting breaths draw the mind out of the moment. You are walking for the exercise, but also to reaffirm life, existence. 

I passed a ballfield and pickleball courts, always crowded, the thwock-thwock of the balls echoes for blocks. Townhouses line the north side, opposite massive Riverside Baptist. Suber meets Hammett Bridge Road at the signal, across from huge Riverside High. Turning south means an easy downslope past Hammett Creek, a sluggish brown stream that winds into forest.

The upslope is a long curvy four-lane road. Woods obscures the summit. Here is the bamboo, which partially hides a vine-covered building, probably owned by the farmer of Hammett Bridge Farm, which lies around the bend. The woods end at a large pasture. Cows sometimes graze there, less often now. You might guess that the owner is looking to sell. Here I was at two miles.

The pasture is bordered by a dense treeline. I was panting now, at an intersection with Batesville. I made the turn, facing bright sunlight. Across a broad lawn was Fellowship Presbyterian, next to a giant house, the pastor’s home, I guessed.

I plodded on past Boiling Springs fire station and Buena Vista Elementary, which borders another pasture. Again, we have seen cows grazing, but recently a sign appeared announcing a public hearing, probably to discuss the owner’s plan to sell to a developer. No cows today.

Batesville takes the walker past upscale subdivisions named River Oaks, Canebrake, Sugar Creek, Abingdon Hall, Barrington Park. A couple of them are gated, you need to live there to get in, or know someone who does. The hedgerows are thick, hiding the pools. On the right is Stoney Creek Recreation Center, with four tennis courts, now dual-use for pickleball. I hit three miles.

This is pleasant country. The sidewalk borders tall, manicured crepe myrtles. Front yards show off pretty landscaping, flowerbeds, rosebushes, trimmed shrubbery, cared for by people gifted with the gentler touch of suburban life.

Then too, this is the South, for some folks pride in property is akin to pride in self. Yet in this temperate, humid climate, dandelions, chickweed, crabgrass, and other noxious species are primed to attack and overwhelm lawns. This spring a six-month drought has brought epidemic weed growth. On some streets, yard after yard show as scrub-growth jungles.

The suburban universe fell behind me, I was in retail territory. To my left a Zaxby’s Chicken Fingers & Buffalo Wings faces a CVS. Traffic whizzed by. Across the street is a wide strip mall anchored by a Publix, alongside a Jersey Mike’s. Batesville here intersects with the Parkway, left with that name, I guessed, because no one thought of anything else. A Lovely Nails & Spa perches at the corner, across is a multipump Spinx gas station.

A few hundred yards down the Parkway I hit four miles. I schlepped faster on the downhill straightaway, past a skin care and plastic surgery practice. The slope of the road turned steeper. I could see the slanted roof of the Michelin USA headquarters. 

I felt distracted by the surroundings. The Parkway is a nice descent for a quarter-mile past Jet’s Pizza, Maven Hair, a drycleaner, and a Thai restaurant. A side street takes you into the very chic Thornblade neighborhood, known for its private club and golf course.

I breathed harder, slowing a bit, passing a Courtyard Marriott, where we had stayed on our first nights in town. It was Halloween weekend, 2020.  Covid was scary. Within weeks I was in the operating room at the downtown hospital.

The Parkway intersects with Pelham Road. Across was the ramp to I-85. Traffic lined up. I passed a Dunkin Donuts and turned onto Pelham.  Within a block I made five miles. It was about 11:00 AM. The sun was high and hot.

My legs were tired, my shoulders ached. The Parkway in reverse faded uphill. I paused and looked around, five miles out under a noon sun. I could have strolled on a treadmill at the air-conditioned YMCA gym.

This chain of busy streets is a kludge of neon signs glowing, drivers looking for parking. Traffic threatens. The urban hiker watches and waits at intersections, on guard. No pondering the future or the state of mankind. The walking surface is hard and hot. Well, it was a choice.

We made many choices over all these decades, work, family, work, more work, packing and moving, packing and moving, until landing in this place. The kids scattered, people passed on. We got through the medical things. They keep coming. I eased my pace.

I stopped and looked ahead at the sidewalk snaking down the hill then up again, into the warm haze. I inhaled a mix of spring air and exhaust.  My five-mile asphalt and concrete tour will have to become ten—another choice. I swigged some water and moved on.

May 18, 2026

The fully grown maple in the backyard facing ours, attached at the top to a cable tied to the front end of a Bobcat, quivered as the driver, 100 feet away, backed up. The 60-foot-long tree, limbs already removed, crashed to earth with a thunderous boom. Sandy and I and the homeowner, the only spectators, applauded. The tree-cutting team signaled thumbs-up.

For the job the Juan’s Tree Service team used a high-tech remotely controlled operator’s bucket, a massive wood chipper, the Bobcat, a tractor fitted with giant claws, and an arsenal of chainsaws. The guy in the basket hoisted himself among the limbs, sawing quickly with ear-splitting efficiency.  

The neighbor decided to cut the tree to prevent its overhanging limbs from falling on the house next to ours in a future storm. It had nearly happened before, 20 months ago, when Hurricane Helene tore a massive limb from the tree and tossed it fifty feet, crushing three sections of our backyard fence.

The morning after the tree-cutting the yard was littered with cut branches. The men tossed them in the chipper and reduced them to sawdust. They ground down the stump and cleaned up. The sky now shows through the gap left by the tree removal.

Watching the team work was a sort of little-kid excitement. It was engagement with a level of reality that cheers us, people taking action to solve a problem. Taking out the tree created open space free of danger and clutter.

The brief backyard adventure also distracted from the continuing scramble to fix the glitches of age or bad luck. That afternoon I returned to the dermatology practice. Two weeks ago the doc had scraped off samples of a spot on my back and another on my chest. The biopsy was bad news. Now he went to work.  

The one-hour procedure involves the anesthetic drug lidocaine, needles, sharp instruments, stitches. After the injections I lay face down. The doctor’s peculiar work routine kicked in. He and his nurse chatted with each other, laughed, and sang pop tunes while they operated on me. One was Will Smith’s “Welcome to Miami.” They only knew a few lines, I remember the tune and thought of picking it up where they stopped, but didn’t.

A week ago, the day before the operation, I walked with a friend and her dog at the nearby state park through pretty forest. We talked a bit about religion, faith. Those couple of hours offered a far different contact with the universe. The experience was brief but calming. Thirty hours later I lay gritting my teeth on the doc’s work table.

The practice offers detailed instructions on recovery: ice packs, pain medicine, no exercise, maybe a walk around the block.

I got only short naps the first night, feeling a dull ache as the drug wore off. The paperwork stipulates four weeks for recovery. It means mostly sitting quietly while the world and the people we know move on, free of awareness of my white-knuckles encounter with the health-care industry.

I thought of the walk in the woods, of the everyday drill of seeing younger people who smile readily as they rush through their exercise routines before going off to jobs; the casual, friendly talk of the counter people at our usual coffee place; the drives to the nearby Blue Ridge; the 60-mile views from the summit of 3,400-foot Pinnacle Mountain.

All of that would stop for a while. We ditched our plan to return to Black Rock (On the Road, March 30). I sat instead browsing the headlines, which are mainly Strait of Hormuz updates—no other news matters now for so many reasons. Trump in China. Trump this, Trump that. Gas and food prices, health care costs, rents all spiraling up, polls showing confusion, depression, anger.

On that first post-op morning we heard the now-familiar buzz of chain saws. The fellows from Juan’s were back, sinking posts for what looked to be a tall fence. The neighbor who ordered the tree cut yesterday wasted no time. We walked out to our perch in the yard. A giant drill lay nearby. A dozen posts were inserted in pits, which the men filled with concrete powder. They smiled and waved.

They were erecting the fence to block the neighbor’s view of the facing yard, which our next-door neighbor had never cleaned of his Helene damage. Nearly two years afterward heaps of dead limbs are piled high.

The early sun warmed us. The backache had subsided, I inhaled the sweet spring air. The men chatted among themselves in Spanish. I watched as they moved toward the far end of the yard, drilling, planting fenceposts, pouring the concrete. I leaned on our fence pickets, again finding pleasure in watching. It was work of creation.

For a while I enjoyed my escape from the medicine hangover, the details and risks of care and recovery that amount really to so little in the larger domain of human crisis. Others, every day will go through ordeals far more acute and threatening than my one hour on the platform and few weeks of light duty.   

I walked back inside, exhilarated. These strange encounters with wear and tear on the body always seem to pass. Eventually they won’t. But we keep our appointments, take our medicine, and try not to bore family and friends talking about it. Meanwhile, we think good thoughts, and wait for warm backyard days.

May 11, 2026

On a clear morning last week, with the sky deep blue, we walked up our street and looped back around the block.  We critiqued the neighbors’ landscaping, the shrubbery and flowers. Some homes have lawns like emerald carpets, a few are overrun with dandelions. Most structures are in good shape, a few could use a coat of paint. One place looked empty, shutters hanging loose, mold creeping along the eves.

It’s suburbia, America’s promised land. It’s where most Americans, especially those with kids, want to live. If they don’t, they probably thought at some point they would.

In 1964 John Cheever, the bard of the burbs, published “The Swimmer” in The New Yorker, set in Cheever’s usual world, the extremely wealthy environs of Fairfield County, Connecticut. The movie was made in 1968, starring Burt Lancaster as Ned Merrill, a well-off, well-connected executive who lives there. It was filmed in Westport.

Merrill appears in his swim trunks at a friend’s pool. He chats, then decides to head home by swimming backyard pools along the way. As he treks from yard to yard and pool to pool he first encounters neighbors who greet him warmly. He then meets others who are hostile and cold, reawakening memories of his own bad behavior and personal failings. He finds himself limping, trying to cross a busy highway. He grows depressed and despondent and arrives at his home to find it dark and abandoned.

Probably everyone has seen “The Burbs,” the 1989 semi-comedy that pokes fun at the eccentric, potentially malevolent beliefs and presumptions of suburbanites about their neighbors. The film has its dark moments, implying that subdivision life isn’t all friendly block parties and cookouts.  

As a kid I walked a lot. Not far from our neighborhood I would pass a few streets of large, expensive homes. One house, though, stood well off the street, in the shade of tall oaks and maples. The walls were shabby and weatherbeaten, the paint chipped, windows broken. The porch had collapsed, the front steps broken. Weeds grew a foot high in the yard.

Clearly the place was abandoned. It didn’t exactly ruin the impression of prosperity the owners of the surrounding homes had worked to create. It did suggest a darker, more complex, picture of the neighborhood. One house can do that.

We left Virginia for a few reasons, one, to get closer to family, then others: the booming growth of the D.C. metropolitan area, which felt like a decline in quality of life; near-continuous traffic gridlock, commercial sprawl, higher costs, ethnic tensions. New roads were being pushed through subdivisions.

Some closer-in suburbs governed by HOAs still present as pristine enclaves, close replicas of Fairfield County, Connecticut. Cheever’s Ned Merrill would feel at home in parts of Virginia’s Fairfax, Prince William, and Loudon counties, and Montgomery in Maryland. But many bedroom communities show stress.

When we arrived in Prince William, just south of Fairfax, in 1987, the subdivision was pretty and peaceful. In the mid-1990s Sandy was robbed at gunpoint at home by a teenager who lived a few doors away. One summer 87 homes in the area were vandalized.

In outlying suburbs, houses have been converted to rentals. Many show wear and tear, sloppy do-it-yourself repairs, garish paint jobs. Some lawns became weed farms, hedges left untrimmed. We noticed more pickup trucks parked overnight. Out-of-code backyard sheds appeared.

One vigilant neighbor, an elderly lady, would call police. They were overwhelmed. In those final few months I never saw a squad car on our street.

That was the physical evolution, once-attractive places, under pressure from age, living costs, growth, and sprawl, becoming worn and threadbare. But appearances may lie. Good people remain as the paint peels and weeds sprout. In the world created by Cheever where Ned lives, giant homes, manicured lawns, pools, and polished manners may conceal hypocrisy, infidelity, alcoholism, shady finances. Cheever, himself a brilliant drunk, knew that world well.

The single-family home remains a talisman of success in America. Interest rates have ticked up, but developers are still razing forests to build houses for the rich and not-so-rich. The financial meltdown of ’08 taught many lessons, one is that people desperately want houses and mortgages. All sorts of people make it into suburban paradises.

Around here we have a mix, young and middle-aged working parents with kids, single parents, retired oldsters, immigrants, veterans with spouses, a few single people living alone. Folks work in local businesses, or for BMW, GE, Michelin. No investment bankers or high-powered attorneys, as far as I know. I don’t see any Porsches or Mercedes. Lots of big pickups. There’s a small neighborhood pool, which is okay, but the restrooms need painting.

Just outside the subdivision is a Dollar General, always busy. A railroad track runs behind the neighborhood, we hear the trains every night. Barely two miles away is a giant Mitsubishi Chemical plant. (We didn’t know that when we moved in.) One-level industrial buildings line U.S. 14, an eight-lane highway. Fast food joints are packed in on Wade Hampton Blvd., two miles from our place.

Theoretically we are a different universe from the Connecticut suburbs that send sons and daughters to Ivy League schools. I think kids here go to Greenville Tech. So the contrasts seem obvious. But really, are they? Cheever’s world in “The Swimmer” inevitably was a caricature. Not all rich people are martini-swilling hypocrites. And most likely some of the easy-going locals here who never miss Bible study on Sundays and Wednesdays are less than meets the eye. We’re just a few short decades away from Jim Crow.

I sometimes hear friends say they’d like to live in New York City, to experience the electric urban atmosphere, the shows, the great restaurants. Others hope to buy land in the country, to farm, raise chickens and horses, enjoy peace and quiet. Most likely all of them will stay in the burbs, and love it.

May 4, 2026

The class started at 5:30 AM. Jennifer, the instructor, called directions. We teetered into a variation of the “plank” position, one arm stretched skyward. She walked over and adjusted my stance, pushing my arm forward. I struggled for breath. She moved on to check on someone else. I relaxed and dropped my tired arms.

We went on for an hour at the YMCA sunrise yoga class. Soft music played, candles glowed in the dimly lit room. Jennifer whispered commands, warrior pose, child pose, downward dog. The veterans moved smoothly through the routine. A few others, like me, cheated here and there. Soon we all lay prone, arms stretched behind us, eyes closed.  When the class ended Jen murmured an incantation.

The students rolled up their mats, chatted a bit, then drifted away. It was still dark outside. A couple of friends talked about their plans for the day. One young woman shouldered her mat and gym bag and said, “I’ve been reading Ecclesiastes. You know, basically, take the good with the bad, do your best every day.”

She was paraphrasing, but I got her meaning. The first few lines include, “What profit has man from all the labor which he toils at under the sun? One generation passes and another comes, but the world forever stays.”

She smiled. “Well anyway, it helps,” she said. “I have to get the kids going.” She walked through the front door.

Ecclesiastes strikes a chord with the Sixties-vintage set, who played and replayed the Byrds’ 1965 ballad, Turn, Turn, Turn, which is eight verses of the third chapter: “To everything there is a season … and a time to every purpose under heaven, a time to be born, a time to die,” and so on.

It rang resoundingly through the decade of revolution, the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the courage of the freedom marchers, the terrorist bomb attacks of the Weather Underground.

The yoga routine is a jump-start for coping for young parents: children, work, bills, relationships. The relaxed muscles help. The grayheads in the class, exactly two of us, also are borrowing lines from Ecclesiastes, we’re the generation passing. We are keeping doctors’ appointments, going for tests, finalizing wills. It’s a holding action, postponing the inevitable.

Sandy and I made plans, mostly negative plans. We dropped the annual 900-mile round trip to Virginia for the mid-May Massanutten Mountain race. Gas is over $4.00/gallon and could be more if the war is still going on. A few other old-timers still show up in Fort Valley to mark the trails, handle parking, work at aid stations. But only a few. Our generation is passing.

The St. Anselm College reunion in New Hampshire also is out. Ecclesiastes is haunting it. Reunions, after all, are acts of defying time. The class of ’71 lately has been less good at defying it. Like every other class.

We know of shining exceptions. Nearly a month ago, on April 11, the Navy commissioned its newest destroyer, USS Harvey C. Barnum Jr. (DDG-124) in Norfolk, Virginia. The ship’s name honors Col. Barnum USMC (Ret.), a St. Anselm alum, class of ’62, who as a one-year first lieutenant won the Medal of Honor in Vietnam in 1965 after a horrific firefight at an obscure place called Ky Phu.  

Barnum spoke at the ceremony: “Our strength is not built on technology alone,” he said, referring to the ship’s loadout of radars, guns, and missiles, “but on trust, trust that we will stand by one another and that no one will ever be left behind.” He then issued his own command to the ship’s crew: “Charge On!” The colonel, 86 in July, doesn’t show any sign of slowing down.

Then there’s the rest of us. We’re scheduled to show up in June, for the third straight year, at Sandy’s family’s get-together in Mount Juliet, Tenn., a half-hour east of Nashville. The Harper family, originally from Franklin County, is nestled mostly in the middle of the state, with a few people sprinkled around Georgia and (I think) Florida. It will be a far different affair than the Barnum commissioning.

Two years ago the event attracted a good-sized crowd of uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews, nieces. Last year it was smaller. A thunderstorm swept in, so did mortality. We looked around and missed people. Sandy’s sister Kay and brother-in-law Dale had passed, both a decade younger than “Barney” Barnum. Last summer her second brother-in-law, Alex, died. Other familiar faces won’t be there.

We’ll drive into Nashville and visit the Veterans Cemetery where her parents and brother lie. Later we’ll stop by our old house near Vanderbilt University. In June it will be 40 years since we said goodbye to the place. Last summer, year 39, we talked to a neighbor, a young woman who hadn’t been born until decades after we drove away with our three kids, two of them then under five. The fourth, Kathleen, showed up in Jersey.

We’ll stroll up the street and stop at the Kroger supermarket, which used to be a Harris Teeter, which used to be a Compton’s Food Town, in the dark ages of the early 1980s. Across the street is Brown’s Diner, now a lunchtime hot spot instead of the cramped tavern of long ago.

But the past also is exhausting. Memories can be good lessons or hard ones. Forty years raises ghosts, sometimes regrets. Some things could have turned out another way. Still, the words remain, the eternal wisdom: one generation is passing, another comes. We’ll hang around for a while, then turn to the six-hour trip home. Traffic will be heavy on I-40 East. The plan, as always: move forward, or: “Charge On!”