Watch where you're going, son

GREENVILLE, S.C. — I look backward a lot. I look backward so much that I can hear the voice of a 1970s mom in my head saying, “Your head’s gonna get stuck like that.” It’s a wonder my neck actually still functions.

The past has always been a source of fascination for me, from my earliest memories.

When I was 10, I became the youngest person ever to make his way to the Rare Book Room at the Springfield-Greene County Library and ask to look at microfilm. (I don’t actually know that I was the youngest person to do so, but I always was by a factor of decades the youngest person I ever saw in that room.) I spent hours, days, weeks, practically entire summers spinning that microfilm and soaking in the past of my city.

The internet, that great Tool of the Future, allows me to relive those summers. I can access that microfilm any time I want. I’m lucky that newspapers.com has an almost complete archive of newspapers published in Springfield, Mo. (And, of course, thousands of other cities.) I can turn my computer screen into a rear-view mirror with just a few strokes of a keyboard and $10 a month. And yes, I pay to subscribe to old newspapers but won’t pay to subscribe to tomorrow’s newspaper. That is a discussion for another time.

Looking back is not inherently unhealthy, sources assure me, but it’s not always helpful, and the layers of memories have stratified in some uncomfortable ways. I love few things more than finding old family stories in my genealogical research and trying to make them come alive. I regret deeply that I didn’t put more effort into that when the people involved were, you know, actually alive. Those people would likely have really enjoyed recounting those tales to an interested kid. I love flipping through old articles I wrote back when I was a sports writer. But doing so also dredges up sharp memories of all the mistakes I made during that time in my life and reminds me that I was not anywhere near as good at that job as I thought I was when I was in my 20s.

I immerse myself in nostalgia even when it’s uncomfortable, like a too-hot bath or a bad massage. I need to twist my head forward. That’s why I’m here.

The best way for me to make sense of what is going on right here, right now, right in front of me is to write it out.

I’ve done a lot of writing as a solitary exercise, and frankly, it’s monumentally unfulfilling. So I need to share it with you. I need to share it with more than one of you (which is something that common social media does really well) but I also need to share it more than one sentence at a time (which is something common social media does very poorly. Also, all of the other things about social media that suck.)

I’d rather have a smaller audience that actively takes a few minutes to take this walk with me, rather than smushing yet another 280 characters into 280 million people’s 280 characters. I’d love nothing more than for you to take these occasional morning or evening walks with me.

I’m doing this for me, but hopefully there’ll be value in it for you. I have fond memories of getting letters from my Granny as a kid, even if the letters themselves only recounted mundane details of the day-to-day. “Had some rain here last week; really needed that.” As much as I’d love to write letters to all y’all, I’m terrible about making sure I have stamps. Hopefully this will do. I’d love to have you along.