It's been more years than I care to admit since Wayne or I have lived in El Dorado, but when we talk about coming here, we both still refer to it as "home." I suppose since we grew up in this community, we will always think of it in those terms. And while neither of us expected the town to stay just as it was when we left, sometimes the changes that have occurred in our absence reach out and demand our attention.
The old swinging bridge and even the lake itself are gone...submerged under a newer, larger body of water that saves Riverside from the spring floods. Landmarks like those are monumental in your memory, but another landmark, the county courthouse, still proudly stands near the center of town.
The favorite pastime on Friday and Saturday nights was dragging Central. Teenagers cruised the main drag, a 2-mile stretch that looped through the Sonic drive-in on one end and usually the A&W drive-in on the other. It was the place to see and be seen. The A&W is long gone now, and the Sonic is in a new location. Putting a dollar's worth of gas in old Bessie wouldn't get you very far this Friday night, but Central is still the main thoroughfare.

The other cool place to be on Friday and Saturday night was the local youth center known as "The Cage." Looking back on it now, times were so much simpler then. Pat Harrell ran a tight ship, and he threw out the rowdy boys who showed up after drinking beer or the tough girls who would sneak out to smoke cigarettes...and when that happened, it was scandalous. There's still a tight ship being run in that building; it's home to the local Police Department. Perhaps that's a fitting metamorphosis.
El Dorado High School was alma mater to both our families. Wayne's Mom and Dad and my mother and father were all in the same high school graduating class, and all of us walked the same hallways. The building still stands but now serves as the local middle school.
This is a refinery town, a product of plentiful underground oil supplies in days gone by. The refinery where my dad worked closed long ago, but the one that employed Wayne's grandfather is still producing gasoline, although it has changed owners numerous times. We don't have to drive to that end of town to know that...we can hear the whistle blow at noon and smell the refinery when the wind is from the south like it has been this trip.

The buildings downtown haven't changed much, but the businesses in them have. It's hard for a small town to have a vibrant core when so many people work in Wichita and find shopping there more attractive. The marque for the old movie theater seems to hold on to its glamorous image, even though its days as a theater ended some time ago.
Gone are the neighborhood grocery stores we rode our bikes to, redeeming a few empty pop bottles and spending the money on penny candy. Just as well...someone else lives in the houses we called home.
It would be easy to bemoan all these changes...to believe life was better somehow simply because that's they way it was when we grew up here. But neither of us do. Life goes on, and the bits and pieces of this community as it exists today are what the young people growing up here now will remember with great fondness. You can go home again, but you can't expect it not to change. It's the same but different...and that's OK.