"Back where I come from, where I'll be when its said and done..."

Yesterday's edition of the Cincinnati Enquirer highlighted my hometown of Milford, and the surrounding Miami Township, in its series on "Great Neighborhoods."

"Well in the town where I was raised, the clock ticked and the cattle grazed.
Time passed with amazing grace, back where I come from.
You can lie on a river bank, paint your name on a water tank,
Miscount all the beers you drank, back where I come from."

There is a lot of space devoted to the town's past. I remember doing a great deal of research into Milford's history as a boy -- enough to know that 2006, not 2003, is the bicentennial of the original Hageman's Mill, which established the town. And of course I knew about the raids conducted by Confederate General Morgan, who crossed the Ohio, and terrorized local residents in May of 1863. Then there were the ghost stories, like the guy who haunts the railroad track near Miamiville since the Civil War days, and the governor and his wife from the turn of the last century, who still "occupy" the Promont mansion near my house. But on the hill in the center of town was where a farmhouse was said to have been a stop on the Underground Railroad. That farm land is a subdivision now.

Then there are the fields along the East Fork of the Little Miami River, where I played as a boy, and which now home to the River's Edge development. It seems that its status as a flood plain didn't prevent the town leaders from incorporating it in the 1980s, and zoning it for business. Even with a flood control dam upstream, the falling rain has to settle somewhere. Guess where it's been settling this year? Nice goin', fellas.

For all the talk about future growth, the town never was much for planning. This is mostly due, in my opinion, to a lack of cooperation between city and township. But there is talk of creating a "town center" along old Route 28, just up the hill from the northeastern outskirts. Wonder if they'll ever pull it off.

There is much about the Methodists who founded the town, but no mention of them still more or less running the show today.

Best of all, my hometown parish, St Andrew's, gets a good write-up for the work of their St Vincent de Paul Society. I still remember when I worked at Kroger's in high school, and the store gave me four shopping carts full of leftover Christmas candy. It was this group in the parish that took the goods off my hands, to distribute to the elderly. The sesquicentennial of the parish is has been titled Celebratio Fidei, or A Celebration of Faith. It's the only nod to tradition that place has seen in years. They renovated the place so the altar and the ambo are side by side, with the priest's chair behind and in the center. It looks perfectly ridiculous. Apparently they bought the same old line: "Vatican II made us do it." Uh-huh.

Still, I have tentative plans to be buried in the parish cemetary, with the words from the old prayers at the foot of the altar engraved: Introibo ad altare Dei, ad Deum, qui laetificat juventutem meam -- "I will go to the altar of God, to God, the joy of my youth."

And occasionally, I get back there, and try to visit my old haunts, to remember how they once looked.

And with any luck, I avoid getting arrested for trespassing.

"Well I'm proud as anyone
That's where I come from."