Home Is Where the Hut Is
17th January 2011
It is one thing to look back with nostalgia and edifying memory to the place one came from. It is entirely different to allow attachment to a past place to prevent someone from putting down roots where he is today. The communities we long for, if they are to be built, will be built and maintained by a mongrel horde. Not only is it important for us to put down roots, we need to help our neighbors do so as well. If we have to wait a fourth of our lives, or more, for full local citizenship, most collections of folk will never be communities.
I still consider myself a Hoosier, although I’ve lived in Texas significantly longer than I ever lived in Indiana (and I’ll probably still be here when I check out).
But psychologically, picking up and moving to Seattle or Orlando or Anchorage or DC would be an adventure (and I hate adventures); moving to some place in Indiana or Michigan or Illinois, on the other hand, would just be going back home. Ain’t sayin’ that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but it’s a thing.
January 17th, 2011 at 12:15
My family always believed that home is where we choose to live. My ex- was raised to believe that you should live within walking distance of where you were born and all of your known relatives should be in that same radius. I mention this only as a warning to other readers so they may avoid the same level of pain I endured from such a disasterous relationship.
January 17th, 2011 at 13:42
And yet there seems to be a part of the human personality that values such things. Senator Sam Ervin, of Watergate fame, was always proud to say that he lived in the house in which he was born and married a girl who was born in the house next door. My mother’s family all lived in the same town, not quite within walking distance but in easy biking distance; I went to high school with my brother, two of my cousins, and a girl who was the daughter of my mother’s best friend in high school. There’s a lot to be said for it.
That having been said, however, I can’t think of a one of the people I went to grade or high school with that I would cross the street to say hello to today, much less be persuaded to live in the same town. So perhaps it’s time for our culture to move on.
January 17th, 2011 at 15:31
Brings to mind a joke told by the late Sam Kineson. At the time, some major drought was going on in Africa (Sudan?) and the TV was filled with news-readers ‘reporting’ about starvation or ads begging for money. Kineson said we should quit sending food and instead send luggage and bus tickets. “It’s a DESERT! There’s no food! Get out!!”
About the time I graduated high school, a long time shop teacher and football coach (in his late 70’s) ran into me and a fried at a bowling alley. (In a small town, that’s the limit of entertainment after dark.) He asked what we were planning to do – I was going to college, my friend to the Navy. He approved and said, “This is a great little town, but if you don’t get out within a year after high school, you’ll never be anything more than you were on the day you graduated. You can move back, but only when you’ve experienced other places and you come with a career and on your own terms.” We, being 18 and full of s***, though he was nuts. 10 years later, I attended my high school reunion and found out he was exactly right.
January 17th, 2011 at 15:33
Before someone asks, my friend wasn’t ‘fried’. (Sure would be nice to be able to edit previously submitted text.)
January 17th, 2011 at 15:59
Hey, we were going to respect your privacy….