Nancy Perry Graham EDITOR
Going Home Again
My family left Texas the summer I turned 14. My dad
had died of leukemia the year before, so my mom moved
us north to Pennsylvania, to be near relatives. I left behind
everything I knew, including my best friend, the one who
always saved me a seat on the bus, shared my short-lived
passion for The Association’s Greatest Hits! and who
listened for hours as I processed my beloved father’s
death. Her name was Cindy Knapp.
Last fall, in Dallas on business, I decided to test Thomas
Wolfe’s idea that “you can’t go home again.”
My old neighborhood looked strangely the same on that
sunny October day, though our neighbors had long since
moved away. I knocked on the front door of my old house;
nobody answered. But standing on that porch, I was 13
again, drinking Cokes and munching saltines with Cindy.
On a lark, I drove to her house. And there on her mailbox,
faded but clear, was the name “G KNAPP.”
Cindy’s dad was Gregory Knapp; I remembered him
as a very tall, dark-haired, intimidating man. I rang the
doorbell. A very tall, white-haired man appeared. “Hi,
Mr. Knapp,” I said. “I’m Nancy Perry. You probably don’t
remember me, but Cindy and I were best friends.”
Mr. Knapp remembered. He invited me in. The house
hadn’t changed—at all. “My kids tease me about it,” he
said, laughing. I found it comforting. The only difference
was the pictures on the wall. Cindy was now Cindy Upton,
LONE-STAR LADIES The last time I saw Cindy (in
the rear) was on a trip back to Texas in 1970, when
she went riding with another pal and me (center).
POET’S CORNER
“Can you look at one face/For the
whole of a life?/Does the moon peer
down/At the tides and hunger for
home?” So asks staffer Michele Wolf,
a poet of uncommon insight, in
Immersion ( wordworksbooks.org),
her third collection. From family life
to world events, her words will touch
you. Read more at michelewolf.com.
a retired Realtor with three grown kids. We called her cell
and left a message. I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone.
Mr. Knapp is now 80, robust despite Parkinson’s disease,
and wry as ever. With Mrs. Knapp in a retirement apartment,
he meets weekly with his old tennis buddies at McDonald’s,
where they debate the “end of Norman Rockwell’s America.”
By the time I arrived back in D.C., an e-mail was waiting
from Cindy—we’re now Facebook pals—with “Old Friends”
in the subject line. It began: “Nancy Jean Mary Perry
(Graham), of course I remember you!! I remember putting
my nitegown in my jeans and climbing out the window and
visiting you in the middle of the nite; didn’t we roam the golf
course? I remember putting on all the plays and having so
much fun together and we both wanted to be Scarlett O’Hara;
I remember going to your piano recital and you were so ner-
vous and your dad told us the joke about the man who would
bang his head against the wall and when someone asked
him why, he said, ‘because it feels so good when I stop!’”
And with that, a cherished part of my childhood I’d long
forgotten came rushing back. You really can go home again.
FROM TOP: ART STREIBER: COURTESY OF NANCY PERRY GRAHAM
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