My Yesterplace

Perhaps you too know of an animal species that is extinct, of a people, a place, or a thing that is no more. Perhaps you have heard of a place called Babylon, once great, but is now no more and gone forever. I shall acquaint you with a little town that I shall call "My Yesterplace" that still has a name and a geography, but its people, its beauty, and its life as I recall it, is gone. I suspect the roosters that I used to hear crowing on early mornings are gone, but the lightning bugs we watched and the crickets that were so soothing to us late at night might still be there. There, in my "Yesterplace", the first school I attended burned down when I was in the first grade. The second school I attended closed some years ago for lack of people. The Post Office, the two cafes, the three stores, and most of the houses are gone. Some of these things I only heard about, because I have not visited that little town in over 40 years. I have often wondered about the pecan trees across the railroad track where we gathered lots of pecans after a windy fall's night and the Chinaberry tree in our front yard where we buried our dog named Jack some 60 years ago. I am reminded of a conversation a few years ago with my wife's uncle, the only uncle I ever knew, who was 96 years of age at the time. Several months before his demise, he said to me, "I would love to visit my home town one last time". Unfortunately, his wish never came true. Like my wife's uncle, that's what I would like to do-visit that "Yesterplace" of my birth even though the house is no more. Yes, that "Yesterplace" on whose grounds I may stand and say, "Here is where my story began". 021621PS