Jackson, Tennessee is my hometown. This website is my perspective of what growing up in Jackson meant to me. Like any experience, we address it from our own unique economic background, education, religion, family and neighborhood of origin. It melds together in a pride of place that I think many in Jackson know well. I have encountered Jacksonians in diverse places around the country. I sat on the curb next to a man at Disneyworld in the 1990s, holding our spots for the evening parade while our wives and children shopped. I asked the man where he was from and he said, ” A small town in Tennessee, I doubt you have heard of it… Jackson.” “Yes, I actually know it well,” I replied.
If you seek critical insight from me here, I doubt you will find it. Subliminally though, my tone will likely drift into the wonder of a world that Jackson was and how easy living those years were. It comes with generational change as we age and look back. It is the natural order. Communities are born, live and are re-born. No community can exist with the energies that created it without constant renewal. The reality of change is the only true constant.
The speed of change and immediacy of communications tears at the fabric of community unless we retain who we once were and who we still are. My roots in Jackson are an integral part of who I am. Reconnecting with Jackson is reconnecting with myself.
Ray F. Huffstutter
Suwanee, Georgia