Nostalgic Normal 5/17/2020

By: Jennifer Richardson Holt

Take a journey with me today if you will.  I want to take you back to a time when the world wasn’t turned upside down.  I want you to go to a day back when there was no “new normal”.  There was only normal. I started writing the following a couple years back, about this time of year.  While the contents of this piece are still appropriate the undercurrents we are forced to reckon with today give it a tone that isn’t exactly the character I want it to have. I don’t want to seem flippant about the nature of our lives right now so I ask you to reminisce with me. It won’t even need to be a long trek into memory.  Just stroll back into the not so distant past to a far less complex time.

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I am standing on a street corner in a somewhat apathetic college town.  It is between semesters.  The bank thermometer reads that it is 90 degrees and not quite noon. It is mid-May. That does not bode well for what August will be.  I suppose it will be what it always is.

We southerners always complain about the heat despite our familiarity with it.  And we always say that it wouldn’t be as bad if it weren’t for the humidity.  I’ve said it myself. I don’t know why we feel compelled to repeat this every summer. I feel somewhat certain that hundreds of years ago there were natives that sat near the banks of the Saugahatchee Creek that discussed this humidity and how unpleasant buckskin was when damp against your body.

This humidity is not a new development. 

However, there is a pleasant breeze that’s doing its best to make it feel not as warm as it is. The pavement is battling against it though on full radiate. I am crossing a street called Magnolia Avenue. Southern.  I feel my sundress flapping in the mild breeze. Southern.  I just bought a necklace with geographic coordinates on a silver chain.  Those numbers of latitude and longitude mark the location of a football stadium. Definitely Southern. I am sipping an iconic lemonade from a drug store that still has a marble counter.  There they still scoop ice cream, and, to my amazement, chicken and dumplings?! Achingly Southern.  The smell of hickory smoke or possibly the smoke of pecan shells is coming from somewhere and I am pretty sure that it is wrapped around some form of swine wherever that somewhere is. Deliciously Southern. 

I glance over at a street corner that is renowned for its oaks. This corner shares its name with the drug store that I have just left.  Behind the oaks are old red brick buildings that were not built in this nor the last century. One of them was formerly a wooden structure that saw a time before the nation divided and shed blood between brothers.  They have all seen so much with their elegant architecture and names of great men of the past.  In front of them like a tapestry stretches lush green grass and splashes of color from oak leaf hydrangeas.  It is just past time for the blooms of the native azaleas here that bear the names of the wives of former horticulture professors or mascots.  It is the quintessential southern college scene and it makes me smile every time I see it.

There is something inexplicable about a place like this.  There is history and passion. Right now the history stands in the foreground and for me, (a hopeless history lover), that makes it all the more warm and inviting.  I find myself letting my finger trips trace along bricks and hand rails a bit longer if I know they are of significant years. The stories they could tell, the lives they’ve seen make me want to feel like I’m a part so I touch where long gone hands have touched.

The old buildings and their older names tell the historical side of the story, or at least a part. But the passion, oh the passion! If you have never experienced or have at least some understanding of what college sports (especially football) in the south are then there is very little I can write that will lend any credence to the level of ardent intensity that I am referencing. This corner under two oaks in the fall becomes infinitely more than a lovely bricked gateway to a campus. It becomes a place of raucous celebration. I have seen people love this place so much that they got engaged here. I have seen people get married here!  People bring their children to this place to tell them stories of football greats and legendary games.  Multiple generations of graduates meet and revel in their legacy here.  The southernness oozes off of every leaf and up from beneath the pavers in the street that make the shape of a tiger paw.  The culmination of the joys and woes of a collegiate family happen here. 

This town is its own piece of sourthernness in all its glory.  This place shows all the best and worst of us I suppose.  The shade is steeped in tradition with all the quaint beauty of this town dappled within the light and dark. You would have a hard time coming here and not experiencing the hospitality and family feel for which the south is known. If you are here in the heart of the fall however, you’ll see the heat of rivalry and almost wonder if the wartime of old is truly a thing of the past.

It is places like this little hamlet named Auburn, called “the loveliest village on the plains”, where you can truly experience this southern life in every aspect.  That fragrance of delectable smoked food fills the air and mingles with the sound of the chimes from the large clock tower.  The bells tell the hour and then play the school fight song adding to the enchanting ambiance.  It is these everyday small details that, if one weren’t looking, would simply fade into the background of an average day in a southern college town.  But today these particulars all seem so bright and vivid.  The sights, sounds and smells are rivaling the sun today in their brilliance and the breeze with their appeal.  I hope I don’t ever take this picturesque scene for granted.  These are the random moments that leap from the memory during times of nostalgia. These are the days that stay with you.  All the fine points nestle into some quiet corner in the back of your mind and, on a less than sparkling day, they push their way to the front causing to you smile and sigh.  I am thankful I will have it to enjoy on one of those days, as well as right now.