Joe McCain came home to Calhoun County last week.

Normally this would just be a short note in the Calhoun County Gazette but Joe coming home is really big news to a lot of people.

You see Joe has spent a lot of his life on the road. Not to mention gone through a lot of wives.  Joe joined the service when he was young, and has been traveling ever since. His relatives here in Calhoun County always kept track of him as best they could, but it was hard.  Joe never seemed to spend a lot of time in one place, nor with one woman.  In fact, one of his wives divorced him because she was tired of having to keep an atlas by the side of the bed to keep track of him.  But that was the way Joe's life went.  He always had to be on the move, always had to be with someone new.  Joe never knew what was driving him.  He just knew he was never satisfied.  No matter how hard he tried he couldn't settle down.

The sad part of all was that Joe knew he was hurting the women he left behind.  He knew in his heart that he could never be faithful to one woman.  Lord knows he tried, but it just wasn't in him.  I was talking to Joe shortly after he came back, and he told me that many things in life he regretted but most of all the regretted women he'd hurt.  They were all in their own way good women and deserved a lot better than him.

Now, Joe has come back to Calhoun County with a new wife and is ready to settle down.  Joe says it's different this time; he has no place to run to, no job to hide behind.  So he has to settle down.  Joe told me strangely enough, he finds that a comfort. He really was tired now of being on the road, tired of not knowing who he was going to spend the next night with.  He told me he's got a lot a comfort in coming home to the same woman every day, feeling her next to him at night and waking up next to her in the morning. 

Will it last?  No one really knows, but Joe does know this:  He finally has a good woman and he is going to do all he can to keep her.  She's special Joe tells me, in a way that no other woman in his life has ever been special and he is not about to throw that away.  Besides, he joked, at my age, no other woman would want me.

Yes, Joe McCain has quit running from the demons that haunted him, found himself the good woman, and come home to Calhoun County.

Welcome home Joe, we've missed you.