Homecomings
In remembrance on the Memorial Day holiday
The horrors of war are evident. To us all.
In the crumbled concrete of apartment buildings where families once lived.
And even going back far in time, recently discovered in the remnants of shattered bodies from ancient massacres.
Today, on this Memorial Day holiday in the USA, we also painfully recall – with as much reverence and sympathy as we can muster for our fellow humans, no matter the causes or reasons for their fights – the homecomings of some of those who fought in those wars. No matter whether if motivated by fervent duty, conscripted by force, or impelled by complex reasons.
Some came home with their bodies and minds broken by physical trauma and through witnessing the unimaginable. Coping with constant physical pain. Haunted by dreams, waking and asleep. Many of them still seeking, in the face of these tides, to carve out a meaningful and positive existence in their worlds, day by day.
And some had homecomings like these, as captured in devastatingly sad lyrics …
From Don Henry and Craig Carothers, “Schenectady” (2014), as performed here by Henry12:
“They say you can’t go back again
But here I am
Just a hundred miles to where I’m from
And as the wheels touch down
I’m safe and sound
I’ll probably make it in before the dawn
Schenectady
“Rolling past the gold and blue of the old high school
Driving through the early morning mist
We’re coming to the hardware store, where I worked before
Right across the street from my first kiss
Home, this is home
They’ve been expecting me”
From Jason Isbell, “Dress Blues” (2006-07)3:
“What can you see from your window?
I can't see anything from mine
Flags on the side of the highway
And scripture on grocery store signs …
“Your wife said this all would be funny
When you got back home in a week
You'd turn 22 and we'd celebrate you
In a bar or a tent by the creek
“Your baby would just about be here
Your very last tour would be up”
Gretchen Peters spotlighted this Henry/Carothers song in a Memorial Day 2024 post on Threads, writing “I can't think of a better way to commemorate this Memorial Day than with this song I have long admired, by my friends Don Henry and Craig Carothers.”
There’s a clip from an intimate performance of this song by Craig Carothers, at a house party in June 2014, in this May 11, 2015 Facebook post by Katie Oates Music.
Isbell wrote this song in (or around) 2016 when he was with his former band, the Drive-By Truckers. In addition to his April 6, 2006 solo performance, in the video above, he also performed it with his then-bandmates in Bloomington, Indiana, on October 24, 2006.
The song was first released on Isbell’s first solo album, Sirens of the Ditch, released on July 10, 2007.