Towns I passed through hadn't changed since the last time I passed through them. That's one of the things I like about small towns. 

They had names like Sasser and Dawson and Parrot and Richland. Sasser I know little about. They filmed a Western movie in Parrot once. I'll bet nobody gets in much of a hurry in Richland. 

The last time I was in Dawson, we buried a good friend. 

The thought came to me as I drove along that I've been an urban animal, away from slow paces and open spaces, for a long time now. In fact, I've been out of the slow lane longer than I lived in it. 

It's changed me. It changes all of us who leave home for bigger, and presumably better, things. 

I don't sleep as well as I used to when I was back in my mother's house, curled up under those quilts my grandmother made with failing eyes and arthritic hands. 

New sights don't open my eyes as widely as they once did, and I catch myself nowadays in about as many cynical moods as sentimental ones and I hurry more often than I cruise. 

Fools rush in and fools rush on, I suppose, and they often are afraid to give up the night. 
 

Would I be bored?
 

As I drove on, noting the onrushing growth of the kudzu, the plush pecan groves and peach orchards and the absence of billboards, I wondered what it would be like to go back and live in a place where they still don't lock their doors at night and there are more hours in a day than you really need. 

Would I be bored in that sort of environment? Sometimes, yes, but boredom does have its good points. It allows the opportunity to reflect and savor and play with the mind. When I was a boy,I spent a lot of time with just me and my imag ination. 
 

Staying or running
 

I made up baseball games and I silently broadcast them to myself. I fought wars, ran races, caught large fish and held girls in bright sundresses. 

I wondered what it would be like to live in a town again where I knew everybody and liked most of them and was able to place every dog with its owner. 

I don't even know my own neighbors now, and I can't even name my own dog's friends. 

Some people never search for dreams that await outside their city limits. I used to think people like that were cowards. 

I've changed my mind on that now, however. There was a song with the line, "I don`t know which takes more courage, the staying or the running away." 

And somebody once said to me, "You spend the first half of life trying to get away from home, and the second half trying to get back." There is some truth in that, I said to the highway in front of me. There really is.