Category: Elder Folk
It's crazy. The things people feel after they've left their hometown, especially ten years later.
For example, I wen online, and read the Odessa American, my hometown's local newspaper. It told about the Jack-A-Lopes, one of the town's ball teams, playing a rival team. It told about the little things that make Odessa so unique. Its erratic weather, its small crimes, its births and deaths and marriage announcements.
And suddenly, I felt something I thought I never would feel. That forgotten, buried emotion called homesickness.
I wanted to smell the dusty air, smell melted tar from weathered roofs, and the asphault from a just paved street. I wanted to sit on a porch on a hot summer night and complain about the heat, and wonder when the next rain would fall. I wanted to hear the familiar sound of an icecream truck's music box, feel the next rain on my face, taste the West Texas cuisine that few are privilidged to taste. I wanted to visit my parents' graves, go to the house I grew up in, see the people I grew up with.
I wanted to sit in someone's car, and sit and wait for the 20 car train that would be going by, and gripe about how long it was.
I wanted to eat at the restaurant I ate at when my kids were small, but never will again because it's went out of business. I wanted to go to the drive-in movie that's just been opened, and talk about which high school would win the next football game. I wanted to go home.
Is it because I'm getting older? Perhaps. Maybe, it's the innocence I miss, the childlike faith I lost somewhere along the way. Maybe, it's the fact that home is only a memory.
And now, my kids are there, raising their families, living their lives. And I'm here, safe, secure, the chaos of those years in Odessa gone. But I don't think I'll ever forget that town, the people, the events that shaped and made me the person I am today.
How nice. This is a good reflection.
I recently returned to my old home town, Charlotte Texas. No one here has heard of Charlotte because Charlotte was small when I was growing up (about a thousand residents). But, that's not how I remember it.
My parents owned a drive-in café, which served a plate lunch each day for a dollar which included a meat, two vegitables, and a drink and desert. Hambergers were twenty-five cents each, (thirty, if you wanted fries).
I never attended the local school, I went to the school for the blind in far off Austin. However, my sister attended Charlotte high and my mother taught there for thirty-five years.
I recently went back to attend a funeral. Now the town is reminiscent of a small village, with wild (or nearly wild dogs) running free, (no leash laws for these folks), small weather-worn buildings, (the café my folks owned is now a feed store). I felt no connection to this town, but, I still feel connected to the Charlotte Texas of 1958, when we kids were young and innocent and slightly rebellious.
As Thomas Wolfe observed: "you can't go home again", but I can go home once more only in my memories.
Bob
I was raised in a very smal town as well. In Bradshaw Maryland, there was lots of space between the houses. We lived right in back of the post office. My father was the postmaster, and my mother was his clerk. We owned the building, and my dad bought lots of stuff at auction and sold it in a store as part of the post office. (My older brother was told that he might get a baby brother from auction.) Like Bob, I went to a residential school for the blind, so in a way, I probably spent more time there than at home growing up. In the summer, I knew what time the "nice ladies" would come to get their mail and would be out in the yard playing. They'd usualygive me a nickel or dime and tell me to buy some ice cream or candy with it. I can remember learning to sled on our street. The road deadended at the bottom of a railroad embankment. My brother kept trying to tell me to turn the rudder to avoid the embankment, but it didn't do any good till I about did a headstand in the snow.
Thanks for this topic.
Lou
Hi Lou and Bob. Nice to see your responses. Do you remember a song called, "Mr. Bo Jangles?" It was sung by the Nitty Gritty Dirt band, and at the beginning of the song, an old man is talking to his dog Tedy. He's also talking about his life, how he took care of his parents.
That song strikes a nerve. Makes me think of Odessa everytime I hear it. Life was so simple back then. Not that life isn't exciting now with all the tech stuff, the breakthroughs in medicine, the advances we're making in space and science. But I can picture that floppy-eared dog, singing "the old rugged cross", howling to the sound of a harmonica in some little post office, while a little fan blows out hot, dry, air, and old men talk about when the next rain is coming, and old women talk about their grand kids.
I just don't think we ever lose touch with the hometowns we're born in. I was there 9 years before I went to high school at TSB in Austin. Couldn't wait to leave. It was the summer of 69, a restless summer with untold dreams, and unexplored horizons.
No, I don't want to live there, but I might just go back there for a visit.
Yeah, I know what you mean. I think I know of only one person that I grew up with who still lives there, and that's my Sunday School teacher when I was a child. Ironically, she now teaches technology at the residential school for the blind where I went.
I do remember that song. In general, the top 40 radio stations never played that intro, which like you DL, I found to be the most interesting part of the song.
I was thinking about this thread yesterday at work, and remembered the house. Everything ws on one floor. When I was very young, we had one register over top of the coal-fired furnace that heated the entire house. It really worked surprisingly well. I was fascinated with dropping things down the register. They'd hit the top of the furnace and produce the most god-awful smells when they melted. To further illustrate how childish of a child I was, I'd enjoy spitting down there and listening to the sizzle. I can remember my mother firing up the furnace, too. Dad never got the hang of it, and we always knew who was doing it when we were freezing. (lol).
Lou
Hi Lou and Sharon. This topic brings up so many memories.
I do remember the Mr. Beau Jangos song, but apparently not the beginning.
I remember when I was a kid, my favorite cousin Danny's mother would occasionally have her brothers and their family come down to play music. It was a good old string band with guitars, a mandelin and, I got/had to play the piano, for this rag tag group. I was torn between the thrill of playing with these grown-ups and playing with the horde of kids that always accompanied the group. When I wanted to play with the group I'd play songs in keys like g or d or c, and, once I was tired and wanted to play with the other kids, I'd change the key of the songs to f sharp, or b flat, to befuttle the stringed instrument players. They knew what was going on, and would kindly kick me out of the band. If I could go back to that time, I'd always play in g, just for those guys. It was so much fun, but it seems there was always a next time to look forward to, until finally there was no next time.
Just reminiscing.
Bob
Bob, I can relate. My brothers and I used to play music together, and I have the evidence to blackmale us all in the form of my dad's reel-to-reel tapes. I used to sing before my voice changed, too. We'd get together with families and friends who were musical. My main instrument was trumpet in those days. I remember the picnics, and being torn between playing in the creek and playing music.
Lou
I miss Ireland so much it's not enough that I drink in an Irish bar, and suppport an Irish team, {full a feickin foreigners}. It's deeper than that.
Well, Speedy, I'd love to visit Ireland. My mom's people were Irish all the way, so I'm half Irish myself. (ah, a kindred spirit after me own heart).
Lou and Bob, I can relate to playing music. I played this dime store tamberene at church, and I played it so hard, the little things flew off. Needless to say, I was never allowed to play a tamberene in the church again.
Great! smile what part of the country are they from.
Me and you have to talk about the Ould Country sometime.
I'd be happy for you to email me
I really miss home. I left there over two years ago and would give almost anything to go back. I hate Duluth Minnesota. The people here are so different compared to the Vancouver Washington Portland Oregon area ones. There's this thing here called Minnesota nice, which a lot of people unfortunately abide by. It's basically where you don't say what you think to do with anything. I've ran in to that a lot and at home, it is sooo not that way! People will tell you what they think. They'll be nice about it, but they'll still tell you. It's been part of what's made it hard to connect to people here. I don't hide who I am either and that's another part of the MN nice code. Consequently, I've not made any friends here in the two and a half years I've lived here. It's extremely lonely and I don't feel that my heart says I belong here iether, which is hard. I think about home a lot and how I want to go back, but that would mean leaving my fiance Herbie here. He won't go back home with me unless his job fails. What throws another kink in the thing is that my family, in particular my dad, won't give up on the idea that I might come home someday. I've told him time and time again that Herbie won't go back with me, and that I'm trying to build a life here so I can't go back, but he either forgets, or blocks out what I say, or something, because at the end of one conversation he seems to sort of understand. The next conversation however, it's back where we started. I love my Dad, so that makes it hard for me. I love Herbie too and I'm not willing to give up on our relationship of three years, so I stay.
Sorry for rambling and thanks for reading/listening,
Dawnielle
I'm sorry, I didn't realize this was on the elder folk board. I forgot to check which one this topic was posted on.
No problem Dawnelle (wow, what a pretty name).
Yours is an old complaint. Home sickness affects us all sometime. So, since the age of your complaint goes back to the beginning of time, it qualifies for this board. <lol>
Hope things work out for you.
Bob
The Scots commedian Billy Connolly once said he missed the things of his youth, then after a while musing on the old days, he decided that what he really missed was his youth.
Stevie
Thank you Bob. I hope things work out for me too. Thanks also for the compliment on my name, I don't like it, but a lot of people do, so that's why I keep it.
Dawnielle
Hi Dawniel and all. Yes, Dawniel, your name is beautiful. I can relate to your dilemma. You are in a rather precarious situation. However, I can also relate to your dad. As a parent, I would like to live near my kids, but that's another story.
Homesickness comes and goes for me. But looking back, and seeing things I've lost along the way does bring it up. The magic of childhood, the restless anticipation of youth, the hectic life of a young mom, the grand kids I never see. It rolls up into one bundle.
I'm going out there in July for my sister's 70th birthday. She's 17 years older than me, and I can't wait to see her. But I keep wondering, how long will it be before I want to leave and come back here. 2 days, perhaps 3? I really don't know. Will just have to wait and see.
Still homesick after all these years? Might as welll contribute to the topic. I empathize with you. I left my country four years ago wishing i did not. I left a buch of close friends from high school, my relatives including my grandparents and cousins. I really miss the fun times that i cherish with these people. I remember empty Christmas days, and other fun occassions that i miss out on them like when they graduate from high school, and the sad ones when my grandmother got sick. There was never a day that i forgot about them. They are one of the few reasons i keep up with my education. I want to get somewhere and be able to earn money to go back there again. These people mean the world to me, so, the only thing i can do to not miss them is to talk to them online and know that their doing okay. It's enough to make me smile.