“O’ lost and by the wind grieved
Ghosts, come back again”
Thomas Wolfe, American Writer
When I was young, I remember riding my bike past the Peterson-Biddick Seed and Feed Building on the corner of Aldrich Avenue in my hometown situated just off the grid in the forgotten reaches of northern Minnesota.
Dropping the kickstand on my distressed red Schwinn Typhoon, I remember sitting on the curb across the street and being absorbed in the mystical dance of commercial exchange that was part and parcel of everyday life in our little agricultural community.
Farmers loaded and unloaded equipment of all kinds. Various and assorted sundries like fertilizer and other dry goods adorned the loading docks and were routinely thrown about only to be meticulously replaced by overalled men who appeared and disappeared in and out of the shadows like clockwork throughout the day.
Aging farmers sat on metal folding chairs wiping their foreheads with blue kerchiefs. While their orders were being filled they talked matter-of-factly, occasionally slapping one another on the back; all the while smiling through tobacco-stained teeth. Leaning against the cool bricks, I imagined them telling stories of trucks breaking down and great bulls breaking loose from their pens and wreaking havoc on neighboring farmers.
And although I was a townie born and bread, I always kind of wished that I would have grown up on a farm.
To this very day, I remember fondly the activities of the Peterson-Biddick building and those long, hot afternoons of my treasured childhood.
But nothing lasts forever.
Indeed, like Thomas Wolfe said, “You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, … back home to a young man’s dreams and memories … back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time–back home to the escapes of time and memory.”
Driving past the broken-down old PB building on the way to visit my beloved Father who is dying of cancer, I am coming once again face to face with loss–the loss of my Father, the loss of my childhood and the loss of my hometown as I have known it for more than forty years.
As the edges of light give way to the darkness, I know in my heart of hearts that I am not ready to let go.
The Peterson-Biddick Seed and Feed Building, northern MN.
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