You can't go home again

In the fall of 1970 Janis Joplin went back to Port Arthur, that little Texas town that caused her so much pain and heartache as a teenager, for her 10 year high school reunion.  It should have been a triumphal return.  It should have been the ugly ducking coming back to put the town bullies in their place.  But Laura Joplin, Janis' sister recalled that the experience was a dismal non-event.  

“They had no experience of rock and roll,” Laura said of her sister’s classmates. “They were still living at home and trying to be insurance agents and stuff like that.  Janis was traveling around the world.  

"She wanted them to say, ‘My God, Janis, you’re the most incredible thing!’”

But instead, the award they gave her was a car tire…for having come the longest distance.

Laura went on. “It was one of those things where you don’t necessarily get your fantasy, but maybe you get what you need.”