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The Place I Will Return to Someday
By Jamil Ragland
I don’t like to travel. I’ve heard people discuss plans for summer vacation, Thanksgiving weekend, spring break, and my reaction has always been the same: for what? Traveling costs money, and time spent on vacation is not time spent on the clock. I suppose that sentiment is a recent one; being a married man with a son changes your outlook on money. Yet even when I was younger, vacations didn’t appeal to me. My family went on a weeklong trip to Georgia, and I stayed behind to attend summer school. Sure, I didn’t really have a choice, but the prospect of spending a week alone at home was far more exciting than visiting relatives a thousand miles away. When I was attending Virginia Commonwealth University, I was one of the few people who didn’t look forward to the various breaks we had, as it meant packing up my things and making the eight hour trek back home. A minor inconvenience for some, but not to someone as lazy as myself.
I also don’t like to move. So of course, as if part of some cosmic joke, I moved a lot as a kid. You’d be surprised how many times you can move and still live in the same general area, in this case, Blue Hills Avenue. Moving is such a hassle. Something always gets lost in transit, even if you personally load and unload the U-Haul. Then there are the boxes. Do you have any idea how annoying a box is? When you need them, no one has any. After you move, you toy with the idea of keeping them around, just in case. That’s when they begin to breed, and suddenly you have thirty boxes where you swore you only had twenty. They’re almost as bad as rabbits.
The point I’m trying to make is that I’m a pretty stationary guy. I don’t rearrange the furniture in my house unless it’s absolutely necessary. Ask my wife; I b*tch and moan about a lot of things, but nothing as much as moving and replacing defective equipment. So to continue the cosmic joke, TVs break at an unbelievable rate in our household. Dressers fall apart, washing machines leak, seats fall off of chairs. You name it, it’s happened. I don’t mind spending the money. Hell, it’s going to be spent sooner or later, might as well put it towards something good. But if I have to carry one more heavy object up or down that narrow stairway behind my apartment…
I’ve spent a lot of time painting myself as a gloomy guy who would like to stay in one place forever, and keep his nightstand on the right side of his bed until the day he dies. But why did I do it? Why, for contrast of course, to create a stark difference between that which preceded this paragraph and that which follows it (they won’t teach you that at your fancy colleges!). For there is one place which I dream of going to. I would gladly carry a thousand broken TVs out to the curb in this place, and whine to my wife just a little less each day. That place is a small town in Connecticut named Bloomfield.
The ironic thing is that I’m in Bloomfield as I write this (the rough draft of it, anyway). I grew up in Bloomfield, I work in Bloomfield, I even spent a good part of my one day off this week in Bloomfield. But there’s an important difference between working somewhere and living there. That’s what I want, hence the sappy title. Right now, I live in Hartford, and there are many people who might consider the two the same. After all, Bloomfield is essentially a suburb of Hartford. Believe me, they are NOT the same.
One major difference is that Bloomfield has grass. Don’t laugh; those of you who live in a city, and especially an apartment complex in a city, know exactly what I’m talking about. You don’t appreciate something like looking out your window and seeing the color green until you spend three years having your eyes assaulted by various shades of gray. I take my son outside from time to time to play with the other kids, and they run around laughing and screaming in a parking lot (it was recently repaved, so that shade of gray has been replaced with super-friendly black). What’s the big deal, he doesn’t know the difference. But I know the difference, and it’s sad. He will too, sooner rather than later, as is always the case with children. I want him to be able to walk down the street to and play football with his friends in the grassy fields that dot Bloomfield, not have me drive him to Keney or Elizabeth Park and sit on the hood of my car, watching like a hawk to make sure nothing happens to him. There are no woods for him to run through like I did when I grew up on Darby Street and Brookline Avenue, no swing sets like the apartments at Deer Meadow have, no safe back roads for him to ride his bike on like Daniel Boulevard and Banfield Lane. What am I going to do, let him walk down Enfield Street? Capen Street? Greenfield Avenue? Yeah right.
That brings me to my next concern. It just isn’t safe where I live. Sure, if you mind your own business no one gives you a hard time, but I’m going to sound like a snob for a moment and say that poor people are crazy, and you really never know what will happen. Last summer, three people were shot on my street. A person next door was killed. My father’s cousin was murdered in the very same building I live in twenty years ago. A neighbor of mine was having a dispute with her boyfriend, so he tried to set her apartment on fire (that same woman got beat up by some guy in our friendly black-top parking lot yesterday while I was at work. When I found out, all I could do was laugh). My other neighbor’s boyfriend is high on PCP more often than he’s sober. So it doesn’t really matter if my wife and I mind our own business if the people who surround us are demonstrably nuts. Being at their whims is definitely a losing proposition.
As important as those concerns are though, they really aren’t the main reason why I want to go back to Bloomfield to live. There are plenty of places in CT that are safe and have grass. It’s the memories that are calling to me. I’m usually not a nostalgic person. Once something has ended, it’s time to move on. But that’s the funny thing” it’s not really over. Every person I care about today is someone I either met in Bloomfield, or I met them through someone in Bloomfield, with the exception of my wife. The older boys who used to play rough with my brothers and I to “toughen us up”, building forts by packing snow into orange recycling bins, getting out of in-school suspension to go eat chips and watch TV in the library, band concerts, track meets, videogame tournaments, play rehearsals, spaghetti for dinner, pick-up football, grabbing late-night pizza after prom, playing basketball on a backyard court made of dirt, stealing cars, walks to Filley Pond, catching a movie, breaking windows, getting into fights, playing in the rain, staying out until the street lights came on, and then some. These are all things that anyone can do in any town, but they won’t be nearly as fun or memorable as it would be to do those things in Bloomfield, with the amazing friends I made in twelve years of living there. That’s what draws me back; not my memories, because I’ll have them no matter where I go, but the potential for my son to make those same types of memories someday. I know he won’t find those experiences in Hartford, or anywhere else for that matter. Only in Bloomfield, that unassuming town with the big church and the small high school, with the children of the people that I grew up with.
In fact, he’s already making them. Two weeks ago, we went to his very first carnival, right in Bloomfield, less than a mile from the places where I lived. Last Sunday, my best friend took all of us to Bloom Hill Farms for ice cream. My wife and I, despite living in Hartford, have had some of our best moments together in Bloomfield, from going to the huge tag sales at Beth Hillel synagogue to swinging together under the night sky at Deer Meadow to watching Star Trek with friends at the crappy but endearing town cinema. We can’t wait to have our own house, our own yard, and our family in that town that I grew up in, where my son will grow up too.
I’ll even neuter the boxes myself.
The Place I Will Return to Someday
By Jamil Ragland
I don’t like to travel. I’ve heard people discuss plans for summer vacation, Thanksgiving weekend, spring break, and my reaction has always been the same: for what? Traveling costs money, and time spent on vacation is not time spent on the clock. I suppose that sentiment is a recent one; being a married man with a son changes your outlook on money. Yet even when I was younger, vacations didn’t appeal to me. My family went on a weeklong trip to Georgia, and I stayed behind to attend summer school. Sure, I didn’t really have a choice, but the prospect of spending a week alone at home was far more exciting than visiting relatives a thousand miles away. When I was attending Virginia Commonwealth University, I was one of the few people who didn’t look forward to the various breaks we had, as it meant packing up my things and making the eight hour trek back home. A minor inconvenience for some, but not to someone as lazy as myself.
I also don’t like to move. So of course, as if part of some cosmic joke, I moved a lot as a kid. You’d be surprised how many times you can move and still live in the same general area, in this case, Blue Hills Avenue. Moving is such a hassle. Something always gets lost in transit, even if you personally load and unload the U-Haul. Then there are the boxes. Do you have any idea how annoying a box is? When you need them, no one has any. After you move, you toy with the idea of keeping them around, just in case. That’s when they begin to breed, and suddenly you have thirty boxes where you swore you only had twenty. They’re almost as bad as rabbits.
The point I’m trying to make is that I’m a pretty stationary guy. I don’t rearrange the furniture in my house unless it’s absolutely necessary. Ask my wife; I b*tch and moan about a lot of things, but nothing as much as moving and replacing defective equipment. So to continue the cosmic joke, TVs break at an unbelievable rate in our household. Dressers fall apart, washing machines leak, seats fall off of chairs. You name it, it’s happened. I don’t mind spending the money. Hell, it’s going to be spent sooner or later, might as well put it towards something good. But if I have to carry one more heavy object up or down that narrow stairway behind my apartment…
I’ve spent a lot of time painting myself as a gloomy guy who would like to stay in one place forever, and keep his nightstand on the right side of his bed until the day he dies. But why did I do it? Why, for contrast of course, to create a stark difference between that which preceded this paragraph and that which follows it (they won’t teach you that at your fancy colleges!). For there is one place which I dream of going to. I would gladly carry a thousand broken TVs out to the curb in this place, and whine to my wife just a little less each day. That place is a small town in Connecticut named Bloomfield.
The ironic thing is that I’m in Bloomfield as I write this (the rough draft of it, anyway). I grew up in Bloomfield, I work in Bloomfield, I even spent a good part of my one day off this week in Bloomfield. But there’s an important difference between working somewhere and living there. That’s what I want, hence the sappy title. Right now, I live in Hartford, and there are many people who might consider the two the same. After all, Bloomfield is essentially a suburb of Hartford. Believe me, they are NOT the same.
One major difference is that Bloomfield has grass. Don’t laugh; those of you who live in a city, and especially an apartment complex in a city, know exactly what I’m talking about. You don’t appreciate something like looking out your window and seeing the color green until you spend three years having your eyes assaulted by various shades of gray. I take my son outside from time to time to play with the other kids, and they run around laughing and screaming in a parking lot (it was recently repaved, so that shade of gray has been replaced with super-friendly black). What’s the big deal, he doesn’t know the difference. But I know the difference, and it’s sad. He will too, sooner rather than later, as is always the case with children. I want him to be able to walk down the street to and play football with his friends in the grassy fields that dot Bloomfield, not have me drive him to Keney or Elizabeth Park and sit on the hood of my car, watching like a hawk to make sure nothing happens to him. There are no woods for him to run through like I did when I grew up on Darby Street and Brookline Avenue, no swing sets like the apartments at Deer Meadow have, no safe back roads for him to ride his bike on like Daniel Boulevard and Banfield Lane. What am I going to do, let him walk down Enfield Street? Capen Street? Greenfield Avenue? Yeah right.
That brings me to my next concern. It just isn’t safe where I live. Sure, if you mind your own business no one gives you a hard time, but I’m going to sound like a snob for a moment and say that poor people are crazy, and you really never know what will happen. Last summer, three people were shot on my street. A person next door was killed. My father’s cousin was murdered in the very same building I live in twenty years ago. A neighbor of mine was having a dispute with her boyfriend, so he tried to set her apartment on fire (that same woman got beat up by some guy in our friendly black-top parking lot yesterday while I was at work. When I found out, all I could do was laugh). My other neighbor’s boyfriend is high on PCP more often than he’s sober. So it doesn’t really matter if my wife and I mind our own business if the people who surround us are demonstrably nuts. Being at their whims is definitely a losing proposition.
As important as those concerns are though, they really aren’t the main reason why I want to go back to Bloomfield to live. There are plenty of places in CT that are safe and have grass. It’s the memories that are calling to me. I’m usually not a nostalgic person. Once something has ended, it’s time to move on. But that’s the funny thing” it’s not really over. Every person I care about today is someone I either met in Bloomfield, or I met them through someone in Bloomfield, with the exception of my wife. The older boys who used to play rough with my brothers and I to “toughen us up”, building forts by packing snow into orange recycling bins, getting out of in-school suspension to go eat chips and watch TV in the library, band concerts, track meets, videogame tournaments, play rehearsals, spaghetti for dinner, pick-up football, grabbing late-night pizza after prom, playing basketball on a backyard court made of dirt, stealing cars, walks to Filley Pond, catching a movie, breaking windows, getting into fights, playing in the rain, staying out until the street lights came on, and then some. These are all things that anyone can do in any town, but they won’t be nearly as fun or memorable as it would be to do those things in Bloomfield, with the amazing friends I made in twelve years of living there. That’s what draws me back; not my memories, because I’ll have them no matter where I go, but the potential for my son to make those same types of memories someday. I know he won’t find those experiences in Hartford, or anywhere else for that matter. Only in Bloomfield, that unassuming town with the big church and the small high school, with the children of the people that I grew up with.
In fact, he’s already making them. Two weeks ago, we went to his very first carnival, right in Bloomfield, less than a mile from the places where I lived. Last Sunday, my best friend took all of us to Bloom Hill Farms for ice cream. My wife and I, despite living in Hartford, have had some of our best moments together in Bloomfield, from going to the huge tag sales at Beth Hillel synagogue to swinging together under the night sky at Deer Meadow to watching Star Trek with friends at the crappy but endearing town cinema. We can’t wait to have our own house, our own yard, and our family in that town that I grew up in, where my son will grow up too.
I’ll even neuter the boxes myself.
