I reckon every child in Piedmont grows up with a moment when the world takes a deep breath and reveals itself for what it truly is. Mine came on a spring afternoon that smelled like honeysuckle, woodsmoke, and a hint of fertilizer from Mr. Carmichael’s perpetually over-enthusiastic garden.

Up to that point in life, I believed Piedmont was the center of creation. I thought everything worth knowin’, seein’, or discussin’ happened inside that gentle bowl of hills between Dugger Mountain and the railroad tracks. Anything beyond that boundary might as well have been Oz or Atlantis for all it mattered. In my mind, Piedmont was big enough to hold every mystery in the world.

That belief lasted right up until the day I wandered into town alone for the very first time. I was ten. Maybe eleven. Old enough to think I knew my way around, but young enough that I still believed my parents were in secret cahoots with the Almighty about my whereabouts.

I remember walkin’ down Centre Avenue with a pocket full of lint and one nickel that I guarded like a family heirloom. I had a mind to buy some baseball cards or a single banana Popsicle, dependin’ on what temptation called my name when I reached the Steward’s Five and Dime.

On the way, I passed the bench outside the barber shop where the old men held their daily congressional hearings. They never voted on anything except whether the Braves had already ruined the season, but they debated it with the enthusiasm of national lawmakers.

Mr. Fowler spotted me first.

“Boy,” he called, “you look like you got important business.”

“Yes sir,” I said, feeling taller than usual. “Gonna get me a Popsicle.”

He nodded slow.

“Better hurry. Sun is hot enough to melt one straight out the wrapper.”

The men laughed, slow and gravelly, the way men do when they have lived long enough to know the joke is really about somethin’ else.

As I kept walkin’, I passed Miss Patsy Reynolds sweeping her porch. She waved that broom like a scepter. Miss Patsy knew everything about everybody, partly because she paid attention and partly because people talked too loud around her window.

“You tell your mama I said her biscuits were a blessing to this town,” she hollered.

“Yes ma’am,” I said, though I had no intention of re-enterin’ that particular battlefield. Compliments made my mama cook more biscuits. More biscuits made Daddy brag. Daddy’s braggin’ made Mama blush. Mama’s blushin’ made Daddy tell stories. Daddy’s stories dragged on until midnight. I was not responsible enough for that chain reaction.

At the Five and Dime, I bought my Popsicle, walked outside, and did my level best to eat it before it liquefied. But halfway through, I stopped. Because at that very moment, while mint green dripped down my fingers and onto my shirt, I looked up and realized something that surprised me more than anything.

I knew everybody on the street.

Not in the vague way a child knows adults by face or nickname. I knew them. Their stories. Their aches. Their joys. I knew who argued with who, who borrowed sugar from who, who had a new baby, who had lost someone dear, who had been healed, and who was hurtin’ but hidin’ it.

The town felt as small as a front porch quilt, every thread leadin’ to another.

Yet at that same moment I saw somethin’ else.

I saw that every single one of those folks had a whole life beyond the sliver of them I knew. They had secret dreams they never spoke of. They had failures I’d never heard about. They had triumphs nobody applauded. They carried memories deep as wells. They were each a world unto themselves.

It hit me like a shy revelation.

Piedmont was tiny enough that everybody knew your business, yet enormous enough that nobody knew your heart.

The Popsicle dripped down my arm while I stood there lookin’ from face to face, feelin’ both comforted and overwhelmed by the sheer size of all these lives runnin’ parallel to mine.

Right then, Piedmont grew and shrank at the same time.

It felt small enough to cradle you, yet big enough to remind you that you did not know a tenth of what you thought you knew.

I walked home slow that day, passin’ the porch sitters and shopkeepers with new eyes. They were not just characters in my small boy story anymore. They were people with chapters I had never read.

And that was the day I realized the world was always a little bigger than it looked and people were always a little deeper than they seemed.

Even in Piedmont.
Especially in Piedmont.

*****

New Yesterdays can be found at: Books-A-Million, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon, as well as your favorite bookshops. The Audiobook is available from Libro.fm, as well as Amazon.