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What Macon is to me

Macon is my home town. I wasn't born there; we moved there right after I completed the first grade. But that's where I grew up, that's where my childhood memories are from, and that's where my hometown is.

Macon is a small Midwestern county seat town of about 5,000 people in northeast Missouri, about 50 miles north of Columbia. It's the center of commerce for Macon County. It's the home of the Macon Tigers. It's the home of some light manufacturing and some retail stores that serve the area. There's a Wal-Mart on the edge of town and the requisite fast food places. Deer hunting is big business in Macon.

My Three Macons

Like I said, I went to school in Macon. I sang in the choir and played piano in the jazz band. I was in "Finian's Rainbow", the very first Broadway musical that the high school performed. I wore tights in the chorus of "Camelot".

And in "The Music Man", I played Jacey Squires, the owner of the local livery stable and the first tenor in the barbershop quartet. I was the one who screamed "Ice Cream" on a high "A" at the climatic moment when the four members of the school board suddenly realized that they could get along better if they sang barbershop music. (More on that later.)

After my graduation, I left Macon. I haven't lived there in over 30 years. I go back a couple of times a year to visit my mother, who still lives there. So this essay isn't a definitive version of Macon as written by a current resident. It was written by someone who left and is now looking back. It's a unique combination of the Macon I remember, the Macon I see now, and the Macon I found through my postcard collection.

My First Macon

I remember growing up in Macon in the mid-to-late 1960s. I knew the city like the back of my hand. We could walk or ride our bicycles anywhere. Summers were especially fun. Mom and Dad came home from work for lunch just about every day. Lunch hours were really an hour long back then. Everything was close to everything else. It was a tiny world, but there was really no reason to go anywhere else.

The highlight of summers was the annual Sidewalk Bazaar. I didn't realize it at the time, but it was really just an excuse for the downtown merchants to unload their end-of-season merchandise. But to a kid, it was as grand as any circus. A small carnival brought rides into town. Downtown streets were blocked off and there were people everywhere. Kids lined up dozens-deep to have the honor of getting soaked in the dunking tank in front of

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