Going Home... to An Inhabited Town

Psalm 107
O give thanks to God who is good, and whose steadfast love endures forever. Let those redeemed from trouble say so, whom God gathered in from the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south. Some wandered in desert wastes, finding no way to an inhabited town; hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted within them. Then they cried out in their trouble and God delivered them from their distress, leading them by a straight way, until they reached an inhabited town. Let them thank God for such steadfast love and wonderful works to humankind. For God satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things.


I grew up in a farming community in Missouri, about 70 miles east of Kansas City. Tucked away there between the green rolling hills is a little town called Norborne. In those days the population was 1000. There I finished elementary school, junior high and high school. That’s where I learned to play clarinet and held first chair, sang in the choir, played and sang in small ensembles and solos for contests, produced copy and layout for yearbooks, cheered at football games, debated both pro and con on national topics, learned to conjugate Latin (amare, amo, amas, amat – I love!), played bass drum in marching band (what was that about?) had the lead role in a couple of plays, and almost beat Ronnie Lyon in a race for student body president. He never let me forget it!

The Psalmist talks about people wandering in wastelands, finding no way to an inhabited town. This summer, very soon, I’ll load up my little Prius and drive the long road home to an inhabited town. The town has changed. The drug store is closed where we used to walk after school for an order of fries and a drink from the soda fountain. Vanilla phosphate was my preference. Norborne may be smaller, and many of the people I knew are no longer there, but there are memories sleeping in the doorways and on the corner lot where the bandstand used to be, where we played on summer nights for the shoppers who had come to town. I plan to wake up some of those memories and shake the dust off them.

The Psalmist says, ‘hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted within them.’ Every year there was a fair in Norborne where the best produce from everyone’s garden was carted carefully to be put up beside the neighbor’s produce and judged. The best got blue ribbons. The best of the best got Best of Show. Hardly anyone in that little town went hungry. There was plenty to go around and hearts generous enough to share.

When I think of the tastes of home, I always think of peanut rolls. I’ve never eaten a peanut roll anywhere else that I’ve lived or traveled – as far as I know they are native to Norborne. My mother-in-law, Edith, made some of the best. Pep Club sold them at football games as a fundraiser. I’ll have to make you some sometime. Very soon I'm going back to a little hometown that's inhabited by good cooks and remarkable memories.