I'm going up North to my "Hometown" for Thanksgiving with some of my family and this impending trip set my old wrinkled brain to thinking back. You think back alot as you get older, probably because the past reminds you of when you could do a lot of things you can't do now, like move without pain. We forget that painful period after a thorough beating you took in a football game or even bouncing around for two hours leading cheers if you were of the female persuasion or George W. Bush. But at least then we recovered faster.

My hometown is a suburb Northeast of Sacramento. Roseville, "The All American City", (They got this designation in the 1960's and since it was the only distinction the city ever won they have hung on to it desperately.) had a population of under 15,000 in the 60's when I was in High School and knew most people in town. The population now is over 112,000 and I only know about 12 of them.

The housing sprawl is amazing. I get lost every time I go there. Where my parents old house sat is now a car dealership. My high school tore down the magnificent four story stone main building that either looked like a castle or a prison depending on what your current status was in school, and built a long low flat concrete building that looks like a warehouse. Progress sucks.

When I was in school everyone drove Chevys and Ford hot rods or if you drove your parents car a Chrysler product or a Rambler. The school parking lot now is full of Hondas and Mitsibishis on which most kids have put fancy wheels and loud exhaust and call them sports cars or hot rods, they are neither.

I wish I could stay up late enough on Friday or Saturday night to se if they still cruise downtown. In the 60's we drove from the A&W drive-in at the south end of town up through the main street to the HI-FI drive-in at the center of town and back around again. We listened to Wolfman Jack broadcasting out of Tijuana Mexico playing Elvis, Dion and the Belmonts and in my last year of High school even the Beatles, as those big throbbing V-8 engines burnt up 25 cent a gallon Terrible Herbst premium gas and we didn't give a damn about the pollutants we were sending out our exhaust, just how loud it was.

We had dances at the Eagles Hall, we had drag races, fights, and tried our best to pick up chicks (they hadn't been liberated yet).
I wonder if today's kids just sit around texting each other all night?

In spite of all that extra-cirricular activity most of us managed to pair up, get married and have a bunch of children that would eventually become teenagers themselves. And I'm sure we all criticised their music, habits and behavior. A lot of us moved on. I kind of envy the ones that are still there, even though the town is no where near the same, they get to live in the past every day.