Twenty years ago, my family moved to a town called Clovis, N.M. Being there was the closest thing to living in Texas without actually being part of the Lone Star state. Clovis smells of cattle (and cattle droppings), grain (and grain droppings), and the railroad (and railroad droppings). It looks like the sparse, flat plains of West Texas. Some of the best clouds in the world blow through there if you ever look up. I lived in Clovis for ten years, and back then, it was the entire world.

Ten years have past since I graduated and left, and that calls for a reunion. This weekend, I took I-40 east from Albuquerque, turned off onto highway 84 at Santa Rosa, and cruised the 60/84 combo from Fort Sumner to Clovis. With the speedy speed limits, the town is only three hour drive for me, but nowadays, it is a world away.

Very little changes in a town of 30,000 people. It has all the basic elements that a simple community could want. Restaurants (order anything from the cow), greasy spoons, bars, golf courses, a mall, a Super-Mega Walmart, Main Street, video stores, a big high school football stadium, divisions, subdivisions, dirt roads, and churches, churches, churches. There's not much in the way of art, music, theater and culture, but there's always miniature golf to pass the time.

Someone bought the house of my youth and made it better. My parents created a massive structure but ran out of money before the house really came to fruition. The new owners put on a new roof, new landscape, a gazebo, and brightened what was otherwise a shell of a home. The current inhabitants were not home, and I could not go inside. I spent 36 hours in Clovis, and I accomplished everything I wanted to do in town in half that time. I checked out the old schools, the old church from my Christian days, the soccer field. It did not take long to acclimate myself to the old roads. When I lived there, I had driven on every street in town at least twice.

For all of its simplicity, what made this town acceptable to me for a decade were the people. I had some great friends and acquaintances to get in and out of trouble with, and at the reunion, I shook hands with as many people as I could. The funny about ten years of separation was how much I couldn't remember. I recognized folks' faces and not names, others names and not faces, a few I knew names and faces, and some neither their face or name. The questions were the same from everyone­where are you, what do you do, who are you with, do you have any kids. By the fifth person, my answers were standard and uniform, but then again, I asked them the same things. Regardless of how well I knew them, I stuck out my hand, smiled and congratulated them on surviving for ten years since high school. I didn't see winners and losers. Just a bunch of people doing the best they can. Pretty much like me.

Strangely enough, coming together with a couple hundred people did not make me nostalgic for the old days or want consummate some crush I had on girls of the day. I went to three events (a mixer, picnic & banquet), and after talking to folks for two or three hours, I was ready to go my separate way for awhile. That was something that held over from youth. I can only handle people for so long.

I had some good stomping around buddies in Clovis, but they did not attend the reunion. It reminded me how much of a misfit I was in my hometown. Nevertheless, I knew a significant chunk of people. Everyone who still lived in Clovis had family to hang out with there. Most people had kids, whether married or divorced. In fact, the whole town is a solid breeding factory. I ate my first meal back in town at the Foxy Drive­In, and every woman in the place was pregnant or holding on to a little one. It's good to know people are making up for my lack of seed-spreading.

When I tell people I grew up in Clovis, people give me wide-eyed looks of disbelief. How could you be from Clovis? As if it were a sin. Everybody grows up somewhere, and while the place lacks in culture and creativity, the hub of Curry County has plenty of good people. I tell people that I'm from Clovis, not of Clovis.

I don't envision another time when I will return to the town of my youth. Even after seeing my old classmates, I have gone my way, and they have gone theirs. For one last weekend, though, I was once again Clovis Man, and I fit in just fine.

Chris Jungle will always have a little hick in him.