Finding a Homeplace - You Can Go Home Again

I can validate the wisdom of Wendell Berry’s theme of finding a homeplace, of “stopping somewhere” and putting down roots. I grew up in Shelbyville, with close ties to my father’s family in Nashville. I could not wait to get out of there. Small town life was not for me, I wanted to live in the big city. I could not understand why all my friends did not feel the same way. When I graduated from high school in 1963, the last place on earth that I would go to college was MTSU. Everybody went to MTSU. It was like continuing in high school, and it was only 30 miles away. (BTW, I am very happy to be going to MTSU now, along with my two adult sons.) I went to Florida State for a miserable year, and then, homesick, returned to UT. After that, I shook the dust of Shelbyville off my feet. I did live in the city; Tampa, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Miami. And then, 20 years ago something strange happened. I came home.  And I discovered something important, something I had never realized. I discovered that there is real value to my self-concept and my sense of a well-lived life in being connected to a place and a community and a history. An old friend said to me when I had first come home, "you know, Ed, I've been all over the world, and seen beautiful places and wonderful things, but for day-in, day-out living, you can't beat the rolling hills of middle Tennessee." I am happier because I have a homeplace. Plants need roots to flourish.

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