The Unfettered Critic – September 2024

“There are places I’ll remember, all my life,
though some have changed. Some forever, not for better.
Some have gone and some remain.”
~John Lennon, “In My Life.”

WE’VE COME TO THE CONCLUSION that Jacksonville is the center of the universe. Or at least our universe. We love the fact that—assuming you have the energy—you can walk from the hilly, forested south edge of town to the flatter, fielded north end in under an hour. Except that, realistically, you can’t. Because you encounter all these familiar faces along the way. The ones that call your name and insist that you stop. Not to prevent you from hitting that hypothetical finish line, but to chat. And chat.
And chat.

We have a mental scrapbook filled with your friendly faces. Since joining the Jacksonville Boosters within a month of moving here (furniture arriving on 08/08/08), and then having said “Okay,” when editor Whit Parker invited us to write a column about absolutely anything for the Jacksonville Review, we’ve met more, and more, and still more of you, kind friends. What a long, wonderful, ongoing trip it is!

So many of you feel like family. Yet while your faces all remain clear, some of your names (hey, there’s a lot of you) occasionally disappear. So forgive us if we greet you with a sincere “Hi there!” That doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten you. We know exactly who you are. You’re the lady who lives down the street with what’s-his-name. Later on, the names may reappear: Bob and Carol. Or was it Ted and Alice? We admit, the years take a toll. In fact, some of the best of us have disappeared from town altogether. A few have moved away, while others have taken up permanent residence in our Silent City on the Hill.

This makes us, all of us, truly sad.

But perhaps no departure has proven so sad as the recent loss of our four-footed friend Charlie, the adopted fur child of our dear pals, the Bowling family. Charlie came into their household in the autumn of 2008, shortly after they, too, arrived in Jacksonville. Charlie was a real sweetheart, and we quickly became her official godparents. She cheerfully cavorted with the Bowling kids (now grown-ups) and with our own four-footed children.

She seemed destined to be around forever.

But, as we’ve learned, nobody is. Especially not fur children. When we bring these loved ones into our homes, we know each comes with a unique expiration date imprinted upon his or her soul. And that we’ll have to say goodbye when that date arrives. From the beginning, we must be prepared to say, “Thank you, for letting us share your all too brief existence.”

Sixteen years is a darned good run, we must say, but we still feel sad that Charlie has become a fondly remembered Jacksonville face rather than a warm, fuzzy, huggable entity. Actually, we feel this same way about the humans who have left town. We even miss some of the businesses that have disappeared. Heck, we’re still not over the loss of the beloved Mustard Seed cafe. Dang it.

Yet life in our tiny, sparsely populated paradise goes on. Please think of our Unfettered entry this month as a Tribute, rather than an Obit: to our town; to all of you who recognize it as the very special place that it is; to the people, and to the fur children that we love sharing it with.

And to the Bowlings, who made Charlie’s life so full of joy that she stuck around for sixteen whole years!

Featured image: “Charlie” courtesy of Paula M. Block