Everyone’s hometown is haunted with memories, and walking through the streets of your childhood means accepting their company. Here is the place you first learned to swim, kissed a girl, fell and got that scar. All around are the shadows of the people you knew, and were, and perhaps could have been.

I spent almost six weeks in my hometown this autumn, talking with old friends, neighbors, and random people on the street or in the store: black and white, men and women, both political parties, mostly working class. When I told people I’d spent almost two decades in rural Ireland and wanted to see how America has changed in my absence, most people were happy to give me an earful.

The town feels much the same as it did when I was growing up: same post-war housing, drive-throughs, and cavernous supermarkets. Only occasionally do I see something that reminds me I’m in the future now, like the supermarket robot that rolls up and asks what I want. “That thing just replaced a few elderly workers,” said the old trucker next to me, who feared his profession would be next.