My Hometown

A few days ago two young women who grew up Kinder, the small town in southwestern Louisiana where I also was born and spent my childhood, decided to create a Facebook page dedicated to former and current citizens’ memories of the place.  As of this writing, more than eight hundred have joined the group and contributed well over two thousand posts, not counting associated comments.  The numbers reflect how beloved Kinder is to those who at one time or another in their lives, called it home. 

Many of the stories which people have told are laugh-out-loud funny.  Some are poignant, others moving or sad.  For those of us who knew that place in a particular time, the experience has been akin to attending a family reunion.  Through our reminiscences we have brought back from the dead parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, cousins, and friends.  We have conjured a Kinder that itself has been irrevocably changed by the passage of time.  By the disappearance of the American railroad as a major form of transportation and by the Interstate highway system that in part replaced it.  Speaking only for myself, participation in the Facebook group has been like jumping into a time machine and returning to a town and an era that our younger citizens sadly can scarcely imagine.

For many years I have thought about writing a novel about Kinder as it was in the 1950s and 1960s when I knew it best.  In those days, not all of the roads were paved, few people had air-conditioning, the older folks still spoke French, and kids could roam all over town on their bicycles without fear.  Saturday afternoon double-features at the local movie theater were 15¢ for children under twelve, and teenagers sat in the back rows so they could make out.  The whole town turned out for high school sporting events, football in particular.   No novel, no movie or TV show has ever depicted life in small-town Louisiana as it actually was, and is.

But that’s a book that in all likelihood I’ll never write.   To Kill a Mockingbird initiated the Southern childhood nostalgia literary sub-genre in 1960, and when I read the book soon thereafter at the age of twelve, it already reminded me of Kinder despite the fact that the story took place some thirty years earlier and in a culture that bore only a remote similarity to my hometown.  Over the years other writers have contributed their own memoirs to the genre, in many cases enriching it, though no one has done it better or to greater universal acclaim.   It’s a quirk of mine, I suppose, but in my own writing I try to avoid treading into the territory of a master at the craft and in this particular case believe that I would find myself under a very large shadow indeed.

No matter.  I have my memories and am privileged to share them with some of the very best, salt-of-the-earth people you could ever find anywhere.  Not only is that enough, it’s everything.

UPDATE:  Based on anecdotal evidence, groups like Kinder’s have proliferated across Facebook over the past few weeks.  My old prep school (class of `67), The Academy of the Sacred Heart at Grand Coteau, Louisiana, now has two Facebook groups dedicated to alumnae reminiscences.  I must say, though, that personally the Kinder group remains the most fun, engaging, and emotionally moving.  And yes, it’s still going strong.