The Familiar

I happen to be a person who struggles with change. I move towards it kicking and screaming completely doubtful and heavy hearted. I like the familiarity of things I've grown accustomed to. People and places, the tastes and sounds. I struggle to let go and move on once something has become ingrained in me, and I always like to return as a visitor, to the places and things of my past. Although the feeling is bittersweet, and those places and things take on a haunted quality.

I thought about all this on my drive up to Ashland. With all the milestones that mark that drive for me flying by outside the car windows. So many different chapters and memories associated with the places on that drive. From Williams to Mt. Shasta, from Castle Crags to the rolling fields and high desert outside of Yreka. I thought about it again when I arrived in Ashland and sat down at the familiar bar of The Beau Club. I half expected to see the same bartender who worked there in college, but it was a new person behind the bar. A pleasant and pretty young woman. She took my id as I ordered a Deschutes Cinder Cone Red, and asked if I was on vacation. I was, I replied. She smiled, "It's a nice town," she said, "It's a nice place to be." I nodded. I didn't tell her I used to live there.

The Beau Club used to be the place where you could wander down at 9pm on a Thursday night and meet up with all your friends without making plans. It was the place everyone ended up. Now it was unfamiliar faces in a familiar setting. It was sad, but at the same time, it was also reassuring in some way.

I sent a text to Beth bemoaning her absence. She wrote back, "Is Ms. Pacman still there?" It was. Still there in the corner, where we'd spent so many quarters. "Put some U2 on the jukebox for me" she said. I did. And then I raised my glass and drank to all the friends who'd joined me at that bar in the past, and of course, to all those who will join me there in the future.