[Photo is mine.]

“O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.”

~~Thomas Wolfe. Look Homeward, Angel.

I’m not a ghost, not yet anyway, but I’ve come back. Back to my hometown of Owego. I have things to do. Getting the new enhanced driver’s license is on the top of my to-do list. I’m getting cynical these days. We live in uncertain times. Our movements, once freely taken, are now becoming as suspect as if we are asking to travel to Area 51, or that hollow mountain out west somewhere, that is the place where ginormous computers are watching us go here and there. If Amazon and Facebook can know where we are, and what we just looked at on a shelf in a Walmart in Toledo, than really any techie can know everything about us.

I can’t buy a pair of socks without an application.

But, I digress.

It’s early on a Saturday morning. The spring weather is chilling me through my jacket as I pick up a bottle of water at the CVS and cut across the Court House Square, passing the Gazebo on my left. I stop and look around. I recognize all this. I grew up in this town, walking the streets, sitting beside the river, and…

As I cross the street and stand with my hands on the large bell, I feel the years slip away from me and I am brought back to my youth. The trees around me are the same ones I leaned against, back in the day. There’s the front door of the Court House. Behind me is the Baker Fireman Fountain. My brother once dated a descendant of this brave firefighter. I cross Court Street and pass the parking lot beside the Clerk’s office. (There is an early settler buried near this spot. I used to know where, but I’ve been away too long to remember.) I look over at the Funeral Home that sits next to the Dunkin’ coffee place. I was a childhood friend with the son of the one-time owner. I’m something of a frequent visitor to that Funeral Home. Once, in the early ’70s, I was in town for a weekend. I had just started out on my career as a teacher at a school near Wilkes-Barre. I remember it was biting cold that weekend. On Saturday morning, my mother said: “Do you know who died?”

“No,” I said.

“The father of your girlfriend, Mary Alice.”

“Oh?” (I pretended I wasn’t interested because she had broken up with me a few winters earlier.)

Out of respect for Mary and her losing a parent, I made the walk down Front Street to Esty & Monroe. I recall wearing a faux leather jacket that was useless against the cold. I went in the front door and into the room where the viewing was taking place. Mary came across and greeted me. After standing by the coffin, she said: “Come here.”

“Do you know who this is?” she asked her mother.

“Yes, it’s Danny Egan.”

(I didn’t think her mother ever met my brother, but I tell this to make a point. In Owego, I’m very often confused with two people. My brother, Dan and my long-time friend, Greg Stella. That’s my lot in life, I guess.

I said farewell to both of my parents and my best friend in the rooms of that funeral home.

I’m a little boy again as I stand near the impressive Civil War Soldiers and Sailors Monument that greets visitors who approach Owego from the Court Street Bridge. The granite is from Barre, VT. It stands fifty feet above the grassy square. A flag bearer stands at the top. At the base of the column are four squat cannons, most likely mortar types or siege cannons. Heavy and black, they sit in the four corners of the pedestal. I used to climb on them when I was a boy. I rode them like fat cast-iron horses. And then I would study the two figures that stood lower on the column.

One is a soldier. He is facing west–there must be something symbolic about the positions of the two figures, but I am not aware of it. The soldier’s twin is the sailor. He is facing east. And he is my protector, a guardian angel, a bodyguard and a friend, if I ever need one.

I don’t think I have ever returned to my hometown without checking in with the sailor. I left him nameless in my own personal narrative of my life because I want him to be something of a shape-shifter. He is ageless, but he must understand the emotions of a sad teenager, the daring and extravagant middle-aged man, and the melancholic wanderings of a man approaching his last adventures. I look to him to be there for me when everyone else has forgotten me.

[The Civil War Soldiers and Sailors Monument. Photo credit: Wendy Post.]

Why is the sailor facing east? I mention above the possible symbolism. But, what I feel is not symbolism. It’s clear and obvious to me. He is looking down Front Street, not on the look out for an approaching army (or a gunboat cruising down the Susquehanna). No. He is watching a house at the far end. He’s keeping an eye on 420 Front.

He’s keeping watch…

He’s seeing a little boy going to his first day of First Grade. On a day when the leaves are starting to turn and the sidewalk is wet from the morning dampness. He hears crying.

Five years pass. He’s looking at a boy walking toward St. Patrick’s School. He’s carrying a coat hanger with a cassock and surplice. He is on his way to assist in a mass by Fr. O’Brien or Fr. Reagan.

Five more years go by when the sailor, holding his binoculars to his eyes, watches the same boy walk toward the village center. His hair is well dabbed with Brylcreem. English Leather scent is heavy as he walks toward a date, a movie, sitting in the Cookie Jar (or was it The Sugar Bowl?).

Only three years later, a car is seen pulling out of the driveway of 420 Front St. The boy (a young man now), is off to college where many things will happen to him, good and bad. He will lose the little girl from third grade that he found so interesting. He would come back, but he would be different.

And the sailor continues to look down Front Street. He will do that until the earth shakes and the monument topples–hopefully never–but nothing lasts forever.

I walk away from where I spent the last hour lost in reverie. So many things to think about in this town where I grew up. Pockets of places where I’ve spent many hours thinking. Slate sidewalks on familiar streets that were there are walks still untaken.

I walk to the hotel where my wife is sipping her coffee. So many things to do while I’m here.

I say good-bye to the sailor.

“Keep looking out for me,” I tell him. I walk away, but not before I hear a raspy, gravel-voice.

“I’ll be here.”

I look up. I swear I saw a faint smile as he replaced his binoculars.

“I’ll be back,” I say.

I’ll always come back.

[Details about the Monument are taken from an article in the Owego Pennysaver (July 6, 2024) by Marnie Schrader.]