The circle will not remain unbroken: Inertia and the return to a home | MARK HUGHES COBB

Sense memories of my birthplace, Dothan:

Pine sap. Burning pavement and chlorine. Sweat rubbed into horsehide; lime on grass.

More: Even intending to be funny can't explain why lyrics sometimes strain | MARK HUGHES COBB

Woods to get happily lost in; walk-dancing to the Elks Club pool; line drives and close slides in Little League.

Billy Preston, Joni Mitchell and the Monkees spinning from WOOF radio. Crickets and cicadas sawing humid summer greenery. Paste on cardboard, cutting and folding covers for newish textbooks that left out the ugly bits. Twirling gels smeared by light shining on an aluminum Christmas tree; wrapping paper tape curling in heat, bicycles polished to refract. Cherry lip gloss on confounding girls, playing Truth or Kiss sprawled across a surprisingly supportive trampoline in the fortunately-darkest part of Sherry Fox's backyard.

The less-annoying Thomas Wolfe suffered an ironic title applied to his posthumous novel, "You Can't Go Home Again," given that his run began with "Look Homeward, Angel."

"You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... 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."

It's second cousin to the axiom about fording running water: A man can't cross the same river twice, because, on turning back, he's facing something that is not the same river, and he is not the same man.

Lessons from a weekend at the old home:

• It's nicknamed The Circle City. The 1958 13.7-mile bypass route, first in the U.S., is named Ross Clark Circle, for a brother-in-law of Alabama Gov. "Big Jim" Folsom. Married to the gov's eldest sister Thelma, Clark shot himself in the head with a .22 pistol n 1955, at age 61.

• Heard Elementary, where I learned from a first-grade teacher that I was reading at college level, while simultaneously becoming a kickball champ? Heard's mascot: Huskies. Among those who didn't know: Me.

• Dothan supports art, strips of funky shops, cafes, bookstores and such where used to be just Peanut Festival parades, a sporting goods store rife with the smell of wooden bats and leather mitts, and an inordinate amount of footwear places ... similar aromas, but from boots and shoe trees. Dothanian Kelsey Barnard Clark began baking as a teen-ager, studied at the Culinary Institute of America, and worked for Cafe Boulud and Dovetail in Manhattan before turning homeward to launch KBC, at 151 North Foster St., where I ate a mouth-watering brisket Saturday, with pals Valli and Miriam. Clark won Top Chef in season 16, and has been nominated for Best Chef South semi-finalist in the 2024 James Beard awards, the Oscars of her industry.

• The soaring ceilings, crinkled-musty-paper aromas and creaking hardwood floors of the Houston-Love Library have been replaced by an efficient, subdued institution. I hit a charity sale at Westgate Park -- which rests atop plots where we'd trudge from Houston Academy in August two-a-day heat, to lay each other out in full pads -- and bought four hardbacks for $8 to support the library, as it supported me.

Didn't think to look in  genealogy to see if KBC may be related to Ross. But she is married to a nephew of Ken Clark, a veterinarian, husband of Becky Sollie Clark. It's a small circle, after all.

The last time we'd talked, while she was carrying her fourth daughter, Becky reminded me:

• I'd written "I love you; do you love me? Circle one, yes or no" to her dimples, first day of first grade. Brother Scotty taught me to read and write as he learned, in Mrs. Pruitt's kindergarten. Becky hadn't had such sib-fortune, so she passed my scribble to a friend for deciphering, then circled Yes.

As we caught up that last time, she let loose a laugh like summer rain. Of course I was a writer: "All those notes!" Not just my first girlfriend, but my first reader.

• Though I'd moved away at 13, Becky reminded me we'd never actually broken up. Tough for her hubby.

• We both misheard Moody Blues song "Your Wildest Dreams," about once-lovers seeking each other in crowds. The verse runs "Once upon a time; once when you were mine," but we separately/together heard "Once when you were nine," the age we didn't officially break up.

• Like Douglas Adams, Joey Ramone, and Davy Crockett, Becky left us at 49. I laid roses on her grave, a centerfield-to-home-plate throw from the circle.

I drove Dothan-ways to sub for Scotty, who died 10 years ago this Nov. 23, at a multi-year Houston Academy Raiders reunion. Scotty was gregarious. Me? Weirdo. But for one more weekend I could writhe, being "Scotty's brother."

That saw about men aging best? T'ain't necessarily so. Of the guys present, I spotted two, while the women had become more beautiful by glad grace, the sorrows of a changing face. If there are magic waters in the circle, the dudes had not been dipping. Once-lithe athletes had melted, suffered Dunlop's Disease (Dad's joke): Their belly done lopped over their belt. Or Furniture Syndrome: Their chest dropped into their drawers.

Not me, of course.

Scotty wore his sky-on-royal blue Raiders letter jacket until he couldn't. I have it now. Gold footballs and basketballs pin down the textured HA letters -- No one listened to my request to spell out HAR -- while most of our baseball was played via the city's leagues.

Though I seemed built for football, and dug the run-and-gun of basketball, it was baseball's pastoral stretches, harmonious vibes, moments languid enough for reflection -- broken by sudden terror and lightning-fast reaction -- that resonated.

Everyone shares a park. Competition may grow fierce, but you'll hear chants of "good game, good game, good game" 'round about dusk.

When it's ideal, you run 'round in a circle, and return. Safe at home.

Mark Hughes Cobb is the editor of Tusk. Reach him at mark.cobb@tuscaloosanews.com.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: The home you revisit may not be the one you left | MARK HUGHES COBB