Being homesick

I'm sort of like this. My mom moved me out of the town I was born in when I was two. I lived in another town until I was 16 and then my mom moved me back to the original town, where I finished the last couple of years of high school. I still keep in contact with a couple of friends from both towns, but I haven't been to either in like six years. It didn't help matters when my mother moved away.

My hometown is wherever I am.

 

Amen, three_bags.

There's plenty wrong with my hometown - old money still rules, small-town politics abound (politically, socially, and, worst of all, in Dixie League Baseball), one race lives on one side of the tracks while the other lives on the other side.

I badmouth my hometown plenty. However, if you're not from here, I don't wanna hear you badmouthing it. You didn't spend the first 18-20 years of your life living here as my friends and I did, so if you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything. You don't have that common experience - being in the same classes since pre-school, having the same teachers, playing sports with the same guys, having crushes on the same girls.

I don't mean to be philosophical, but I didn't realize how much my hometown made me and my friends and family who we were/are until I left for college in a metro area. Ever since then, I appreciate everything about my hometown. It gives me perspective. It also shows me that people from a rural town of 6,500 who had a graduating class of 200 are just as capable of fathoming reality as all those suburb kids who made fun of my accent during college.

I miss going out to my friends' houses in the country and just sitting around behind the house talking until 3 a.m. I miss the two carved-in-stone weekly events in the fall - watching the Dawgs on Friday night and going to church Sunday. I miss all of us being together in the same town, always a phone call and 5- or 10-minute drive away.

I'm not trying to generalize, but I do think rural Southerners such as myself feel a much stronger connection to place than most people. Like I said, my hometown is far from good, but it's my hometown and I'm a product of that environment.

 

More power to those who say home is wherever they are. I've never felt that way. I've moved a lot in the last decade, and even though I owned a home and tried to put down roots, some of those places felt like I was on an extended business trip.

 

just to piggyback off what pal wrote:

looking back at what three_bags had to "say" about this topic, i agree. i'm treated like a long lost hero every time i walk into the cool bar in bumblefucksburg, aka my hometown.

i'll admit it's a great feeling. folks who'd just as soon kick the shit out of any outta towner who had the balls to step foot in the place actually run up and give me bear hugs.

i love those people, i really do. but i've also come to realize that i'm a much better person when i'm surrounded by goal-orientated human beings.