Written by Harry Clark
3M, 2W, Single Set
“Perhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox here in America—that we are fixed and certain only when we are in movement.” Thomas Wolfe
“I believe in keeping everything exactly as is. This way you have a reference point in life. Change everything about you, how the hell do you know if you’re the one changing? Huh?” Roy
No computers, cell phones, CDs, DVDs, Internet, video games, tweets, Zip codes, Facebook, 12-speed bikes/helmets/spandex: a time of simpler things.
Simpler things—a certain baseball card, a certain bike combination, a summer marathon summer ping-pong tournament; all things left behind as Hank leaves Tucson late summer of 1965 in what would have been his senior year of high school. Now he’s returning with his wife, Tina, for the first time in 40 years to B Street. B Street, the street where Hank lived and where a few houses down lived brothers Roy and Mikey. Roy is still here, same house, and though he detests change he’s actually added a wife, a much younger wife, Anita. But Hank’s not come back for that certain baseball card, or the bike combination or to even up the score of a 40-year-old ping-pong match; no, he’s returned to talk of Mikey, his inseparable friend, his friend who died 40 years ago. Mikey, Roy’s younger brother.
Having made a similar return to my hometown after nearly 40 years, I was stunned to remember kids and situations I hadn’t thought of since heading east. Friends and places I thought might have great import often not, but half-remembered shadows—powerful stuff.