I’m going to be traveling over the next week. Not by train.
I’m going to my high school reunion – this time in St. Louis. I went to junior high and high school on an American Air Force base in England, RAF Lakenheath. (Sorry to be repetitive, but one must always set the table for the first-time visitor.) It recently occurred to me that I probably can thank Adolph Hitler for this. Or perhaps I need to go farther back to the Treaty of Versailles which pissed Germany off in the first place. I also lived on a military base in Panama while in 4th and 5th grade. We’ll ascribe that one to favorable geography.
Art Deco (and passenger trains) make me nostalgic for a time that I didn’t even live through. That’s part of nostalgia, isn’t it?
I’ll tell you something—I have such a raging case of nostalgia that I will probably never leave Pasadena this house that I’ve been in for 25 years. I already miss what I miss—the place I grew up. Time has displaced me from that place. Distance too.
Now I’m twenty-five years on in this place—and I still miss that other place. I couldn’t bear to leave Pasadena and face the prospect of missing it too. Shoot, I still miss Fedco!
My passport does not match the country in which I grew up. (That is an awkward sentence, much like the situation I’m trying to describe.) This makes me a perpetual outsider. When I go ‘home‘ – and it always feels daring to call England ‘home’ – the immigration control folks want to see my return ticket. Still, I feel very content when I’m there.
This weekend, I get to spend time with people who have a similar experience to mine. We are third culture kids, and I blogged about it here in a post called “Is It My England Too? On Being a Third Culture Kid prior to my last high school reunion.
Posting will be light to non-existent during the next few days. Next week, you’ll be seeing the happy faces of my fellow Lancers. See you later.
All photos by Timothy Down.
UPDATE: Wow. I just found out that Edward Lee Howard, a CIA officer who defected to the Soviet Union, graduated from my high school.
West Coast Grrlie Blather 
Have a great time! Did you take the airport bus to LAX from Union Station?
That’s some kind of high-gloss shine they’ve got on the floor! I love Union Station because it’s a snapshot in time.
Do you know Fluid Pudding? She is from St Louis and has her reunion soon, too…
We can understand if you ever decide to go back home. But if you do, tell your folks back there about this strange land called Pasadena, and the even stranger people who lived there., and the fantastical dreams of your experiences in this almost mythical land…
I remember Fedco. My folks used to take us shopping there and at Gemco.