Across The Savannah
A Sense of Place
By TOM POLAND

When I watch the Weather Channel's radar of the Southeast, my mind goes back to childhood. There on the green radar map with counties outlined, I see the land of my youth, Lincoln County.

I know this land so well I can see it right there on my TV. I see its homes, stores, and landmarks as I watch an ever-changing red, green, and yellow squall line sweep through the county. I see the Homer Legg Bridge and I know whitecaps are kicking up on the windward side. I know rain is washing the dust off the kudzu that covers Mr. Murray Deason's old storm shelter where my family sought refuge one night. I can see campers running for cover as rain pelts Elijah Clark State Park.

I see more than the county of my youth nestled in the crook of Clark Hill Lake. I see people too. My mind goes back to the Lincoln County I knew as a boy—a world that seemed eternal. There would always be Miss Minnie and JT of Wells Oil Company. There would always be Central Supermarket with Dot, Tech, and Omar. And there would always be Mr. Hirsch Wengrow and Dr. Pennington—"Penny Doc"—Mr. Clifford, and Bill Goolsby. But time marches on and it takes much with it.

Growing up, you have no choice but to see the world through the eyes of a child and for me it made a lasting impact. To this day, the one thing I struggle with is the fleeting nature of people and places. I am always hoping for, always seeking, that old familiarity I had growing up back home in Lincolnton, but I never find it except when I go back home.

That green radar map takes me back in time all right. I wonder whatever happened to old so and so. I try to find him. No luck, or worse, learn that he's gone for good. A famous writer once wrote "I felt a sudden, terrible disappointment" after going across the country to track down an old friend from the war only to learn he had died.

Old landmarks disappear too. I still get the feeling something is amiss when I round the curve in Lincolnton where Blackwell's Store once existed. The old water tower, the one I was afraid to climb and paint "Class of '67" on, it's gone and so is the Central Supermarket where Mr. Tech chastised Paul Harper and me for drinking the juice from bottles of maraschino cherries. The Tastee Freeze; it's gone too, and so memories are all that are left.

I interviewed a man over this way for a magazine feature not too long ago. "Where you from," I asked. "Nowhere," he replied, "I'm an Army brat. I've seen the world."

I have a close friend, Noel. Her dad was a Marine fighter pilot (an ace) who fought at Guadalcanal. She said she moved so much as a child she got to a point where she didn't try to make friends. "There was no point," she said. "We moved all the time, and if we didn't move, my friends did. Growing up, I always envied people who lived in one place." As she talked I could hear pain and loneliness in her voice, resurrected from her youth.

The man I interviewed may have seen the world but I doubt the Weather Channel's radar affects him like it does me.

A sense of place. We all need it. We all need to feel grounded in one special place. More than 700,000 people live in the metropolitan area surrounding Columbia and sometimes it seems like I know half of them but it's not home. Home is where the heart is, which means your true home where the people you love most live.

As I write this column, the Weather Channel's radar reveals a large storm moving southeast across the length of the county. Rivulets wash away soil uncovering, perhaps, an arrowhead near Pistol Creek. Rain is filling my mother's fountains, falling onto Buddy Bufford field, and running into the ponds on Aunt Vivian's farm. These places are part of who I am. I'm glad I grew up in one place. I'm glad to have a sense of place. And I hope you do too.

Email Tom with feedback and ideas for new columns. tompol@earthlink.net