Sometimes deja vu is more than a vague feeling of familiarity.

This was the case Tuesday when we were on our way south for a Christmas Day dinner with family — south being Spencer, Iowa.

We’ve been doing this for a number of years and I have more than a passing familiarity with the area. My grandparents on my mom’s side, Bonnie and Keith Darlington, lived outside of Spencer for years on a small acreage.

I only get there once a year and much has changed over the years, but there is enough Main Street remaining from the past that lends a connection to those days where we visited the acreage as I always knew it.

Grandma and grandpa have both passed, but being in the area still allows for that connection, never more than this year, however.

The drive to Spencer is a jaunt due south from Jackson, Minnesota, on Highway 71, passing through Spirit Lake and Okoboji along the way. It’s often a laborious drive in that the drive is so straight and incredibly flat in all directions. Add an overcast, murky day and the drive seems more like a full day of driving rather than a two and a half hour drive from  Austin.

Normally, in getting to my aunt and uncle’s house, we drive through Spencer and then continue west out of town before taking a tour south again before heading west again.

But this year we continued south on Highway 71 before taking the gravel road west to the home. There is largely nothing that stands out in his area, as I’ve said earlier, but after taking the turn, I noticed quite simply a windmill in the middle of a field. There was nothing special about it, but it looked old and looked as if it had been there for a while.

I can’t even begin to tell you if I had seen it before. There’s a chance, but the antique didn’t have anything that stood out in particular. Still, it seemed like I knew it somehow.

The feeling expanded somewhat, that feeling of deja vu, as we drove a bit further, but quickly went away.

Deja vu in a land that varies only slightly from flat to slightly less so, tends to make everything look as if I’ve seen it before.

After our Christmas meal, we were sitting around talking when my dad asked which way we came in. Explaining our route, my uncle spoke up and said, “Oh, you drove past mom and dad’s old place.”

That’s when the true feeling of familiarity clicked. Driving home, we passed  by again so I could get a better look at the place after getting a better idea from my uncle, though he also explained that very little remained of the old place.

True, there was nothing outward that reminded me of grandma and grandpa’s old home. The red barn grandma and grandpa kept their horses in was gone and the house was entirely different having replaced their home. There wasn’t the merest hint of the water the pump next to the barn, but the land itself told the broader story.

I recognized the pasture land and it’s gentle slope and some of the trees seemed to still be standing — at least to my memory.

It was more of an overall feeling of recognition and above all it had me wishing grandma and grandpa were still around so I could ask them about the place. I had great memories of visiting the farm, playing in trees and helping grandma feed the horses.

This all expanded slightly on the way home. At one point, my girlfriend and I fell into a comfortable driving silence and my thoughts turned to the past, even with a new year coming up that coaxes people into thinking about the future.

I have a degree in history, which I’ve joked doesn’t do much for me these days. However, it does indicate that I love history and the past and as we headed east back to Austin I started thinking more on the regrets of not asking about my own family’s history, of which there is more than a passing interest.

I miss being able to ask those that have now gone the questions I have today.

Case in point, my grandpa on my dad’s side, Glenn Johnson, traveled quite a bit in his retirement: Russia, Egypt, Easter Island, so on and so forth. When he would return and we would visit we would end up watching a slide show of his trip. Over time we went through probably thousands of slides, which at the time, as a young boy, held about as much interest as a rock in the mud.

For my much younger self, they were not something I would look forward to. Now, I wish I had that time back. It was a direct link to one of my favorite thing — history. It was a direct link and wish I had back. It was a direct link to my grandpa.

There were my great uncles — both of which were far more interesting than I ever thought at the time. I was incredibly young and have only a passing sense of them both.

There was first Teemer and I remember being somewhat unnerved by him at an early age.

Looking back now with the advantage of 20/20 vision, he was jovial man, but to the small child version of me his somewhat high, scratchy voice and wide, thick handlebar moutasche scared me somewhat, especially when only seeing him once in a great while.

Only later did I learn of his story which included riding a bike from New York City to Minnesota during the Great Depression.

Let me say that again — on a bike, he journeyed from New York City to Minnesota, relying largely on the kindness of strangers for places to sleep and eat.

The questions the first time my dad brought it up flooded back to me immediately and I very much would have loved to ask my great uncle personally and learn of his story. I no doubt believe he would have had a fascinating story to tell.

My other great uncle, Melvin, was more soft spoken, but after he passed I learned that he was an artist. The paintings and drawings I found throughout grandpa’s house made so much more sense and given my now much higher interest in art, I would have loved to ask him questions about his own art.

How his pieces came to be, what had happened to them.

Ultimately, we are the sum of our experiences remembered.

Some opportunities to learn about the past pass us by and there’s not much we can do, whether by the alignment of time or age, but others allow us the opportunities to answer questions or simply remember a special time.

There was very little remaining of the acreage I knew when visiting my grandma and grandpa outside of Spencer, Iowa, but there was more than  enough to appreciate the memories.