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Meet Rick Tallent:
* Highly-Opinionated Political Analyst
*Well Known Christian Novelist
* Experienced Bi-Vocational Minister
* Respected Broadcast Consultant
* Author of several books including, “Of Friends and Family,” “Finding Rhonda,” and “Preparing to Make War”.
The days when we were in school seemed like they would never end, but suddenly one day they did and we were graduates. The coveted word had been an illusion, something that we knew existed, but never thought we would attain. Still, here we were graduates, our school days behind us, and our eternal futures ahead.
Little did we know what awaited us!
Years, actually decades, have passed and we have gone our separate ways. Careers, family, and circumstances have scattered us all over the map. Some of us have bounced around to so many places that we think life must be a basketball. Some of us have stayed close to home, enjoying the unity of family and hometown ties. And some of us have eternally moved to that final resting place.
I’m one of those who thought that fortune was somewhere else, that success meant having to leave my hometown. The boxes have been packed and the truck loaded thirteen times since high school: every time to a new place, a new opportunity; every time putting more distance between me and my hometown.
Oh, I’m not complaining because my life has been good. There have been good times, and there have been bad times. There have been times of prosperity, and there have been lean times. All in all, though, life has been good.
And I’ve seen a lot of this beautiful country. I’ve been to those big cities that I heard about as a child, and I’ve walked in the places where the history of our nation was written with the blood of patriots. I’ve felt the mountain breezes clawing their way across the Appalachians, the Rockies, and the Tetons, and I’ve felt the ocean spray sting my face on a cold Boston morning and refresh me on a hot Key West afternoon. I’ve walked the scary streets of New York City and Los Angeles, and I’ve paddled a canoe past alligators and snakes in the equally scary swamps and bayous of Louisiana. All in all, it has been a good life.
But for some reason I keep getting drawn back to a little home town in the shadow of the Smoky Mountains, a place where the memories of childhood mask the bad memories with the nostalgic warmth of the good times.
Every time I hear bluegrass music, I remember waking up to grocery man and politician Cas Walker’s “Farm and Home Hour Show” on WBIR-TV’s morning television schedule.
Every time I hear a high school band I’m drawn back to those days when the band practiced by marching from the old high school to downtown and back again.
And every time I see orange and black, my school colors, I go back in my mind to the pep rallies where we tried to spur the team on to victory.
In this high tech world, it is easy to forget the simple things that we enjoyed as children, but occasionally that same high technology will remind us. That’s what happened one night a few years ago. As I surfed the web one site took me back to my hometown, to my high school, and to a list of names with e-mail addresses, names with teenage faces staring at me from the open high school annual lying on my desk.
And then, the next afternoon when I clicked the e-mail icon on my computer, I went back to the hallowed halls of my high school as I read greetings and short notes from some of the old friends who had been missing for so long, some of whom I had not seen since that day in 1973 when we hugged and wished one another good luck.
Since those earlier days of e-mail news groups, we have advanced to Facebook and other social media web sites where we have been able to retrieve a lot of the times that we have spent apart, renew old acquaintances, share old memories, and make a lot of new ones. We have even had the opportunity to plan and enjoy several class and neighborhood reunions courtesy of these same sites. And we have been able to share the joys of grandchildren and the heartbreak of losing friends and family to sickness, accidents, and death.
They say you can’t go back home, but I have found a way that is almost as good because it has allowed me to make contact with some old friends, acquaintances, and family who have helped me hitchhike down the Information Superhighway and renew something that was missing since Graduation Day 1973.
Going home, however, has now become a dream that is my heart’s desire, and maybe, just maybe, a reality in the near future, but until then, the information superhighway has become a means of rapid transit back to my home town and the friends and family I left behind so many years ago.