The weather was perfect this week in the Levison Towers – perfect means that temperature range where neither the heat nor the air conditioning are needed, and thus neither can fail. Unfortunately, I wasn’t around to enjoy the spring temperatures, as I was back in Oklahoma for my high school reunion.
The only place further from my urban law practice than the little town where I grew up is Mars. Mars might be closer in many respects. To put it bluntly, there is a time change between my home town and my current St. Louis home. It was 9:30 in the morning when I left here. It was somewhere in the mid 1980s when I got there.
I hadn’t been back to Okay, Okla., in over a decade, and hadn’t seen some of my classmates in several decades. As I rolled into town, it was reassuring to see that some of the sights looked familiar. The lake looked the same, as did many of the roads. Some of the landmarks had changed of course. My old high school burned down the week I graduated from college. The “new” high school is fast becoming old. I went inside for the first time, but the new smell was already long gone. Amazingly, some of the teachers were the same. They, too, looked older.
At the reunion, I was thrilled to learn that I was neither the fattest nor the baldest of my class. And more importantly, that we were all still alive. After 30 years, that is quite a blessing. Folks seemed to gravitate to the same people who were their friends 30 years ago. Some things may change, but some people evidently don’t.
Some of my classmates still live in our little town, and a few more live within the county. Those of us that have moved away don’t get back there much. They say you can never go home again. It would be more accurate to say that you can, but why would you?
It was in high school that I decided to go to law school. I was a page at the state senate, and many of the senators were lawyers – back then, many lawyers wrote laws instead of just practicing law. Young me thought a career in politics would be fulfilling, and saw the practice of law as the first step. Having long since abandoned the pursuit of office for an established law practice, middle aged me now only talks politics with disgust – and when candidates call to ask for a contribution.
Coming from a small town high school in a town with no lawyers and expressing a desire to go to law school was a lot like living on a cattle ranch and deciding to be a vegetarian. Folks nodded their heads and smiled like they would to any other idiot. Several times in the years that followed graduation, I looked in the mirror and thought I saw the same idiot they did.
Despite all that has changed about me, it still felt good to be back, and I could not deny the feeling of “belonging” that touched me. On the long, post-reunion drive back, I couldn’t shake the feeling, and found myself thinking a lot about why I felt so connected to that little town. Like many high schoolers, I didn’t feel like I fit in at the time. I worked every day with one thought in mind—moving away. My trips back home during college became fewer, and my trips back during law school were almost nonexistent. Part of the reason was that many of my friends had moved away. I should feel dread when I return home, not nostalgia. Unfortunately, my gut never got that message.
I have practiced law for two decades, and have done so in the same town as my law school. I have only been out of law school two thirds as long as high school, but some of my classmates have already passed on. There is a new law school building that I have never yet entered, and I won’t take this opportunity, either. I have never felt quite as connected to my law school as my high school, and I moved 300 miles away from the second to get to the first.
In law school, we all knew we wanted to be lawyers. Occasionally, a professor would shake his head and smile like we were idiots for this, but we pushed on anyway. Law school prepared us to practice law about as much as high school prepared us for life. At least high school didn’t come with huge student loans.
Some of my law school classmates have quit the practice. I guess it just didn’t provide the satisfaction they thought it would. To be truthful, the pay off of knowing the craft and understanding the profession took a lot longer than we expected. Young lawyers are frustrated when it doesn’t occur in five years. I am just starting to figure things out after 20, and I hope to be practicing law for a long time. Maybe that’s because it took so long to get here. Or maybe it is because I can always go home again. But I probably won’t.
©2012 under analysis llc. under analysis is a nationally syndicated column of the Levison Group. Spencer Farris is the founding partner of The S.E. Farris Law Firm in St Louis, Missouri. He stays in touch with his inner redneck, and had almost forgotten most of the embarrassing things he did in high school. Comments or criticisms about this column may be sent c/o this newspaper or directly to the Levison Group via email at comments@levisongroup.com.