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Praetorium Honoris

Thursday, December 8, 2022

Home ...

(Source)
That picture above is where I spent my formative years, I want to say from the age of four (maybe five) to the age of nineteen. It's the place I still think of when someone mentions "home." Odd, as I've lived in my current location far longer, over twenty three years as a matter of fact. But that house (I won't say which one) is where my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins would come to visit on Christmas Day. (For Thanksgiving it was often just the grandparents, both sets.)

I lived in the same small Vermont town from birth to enlisting in the Air Force in 1975. The neighborhood in the next picture is where I lived when I was nobbut a wee bairn. It's on the lot occupied by the two story house in the photo, where the apartment building where my parents lived used to be located. It burned down not long after we moved to a bigger place. (The hospital where I was born burned down, the first place I lived burned down. Hhmm, I'm seeing a pattern there ...)

Oddly enough, I had an apartment in that very building, me and two buddies shared the upstairs of that house in the picture. (No, it didn't burn down after I left ...)

Update: Actually, I think the apartment building we lived in was on the lot where the yellow house in the foreground is now. Hey, I was a baby and it was a long time ago.

(Source)
When I was a toddler we lived in the house in the next photo, our landlady lived in the little annex, we had the rest of the house. The only memory I have of that place was that there was no heat upstairs. In the winter one would get up, quickly as I recall, then hustle downstairs to the kitchen, where it was warm. My Dad had one funny story of my toddler days.

It seems that I was, for some reason known only to myself, beating on a door in the upstairs hallway with my hand. You can imagine the annoyance this would create among the parental units. So my Dad, came upstairs and admonished me, "Stop that, come on, use your head."

Moments later the pounding on the door recommenced. Dad wearily went back upstairs to convince me of the error of my ways and there I was ...

Yup, beating my head on the door. 

Good times.

(Source)
When I was four (maybe five) my parents bought a house, the one where I would grow up. (Age-wise, there are solid arguments that could be made as to whether or not I have grown up, or ever will!) My parents like to tell me of the gasp issuing from my maternal grandfather at the cost of this new domicile.

"Fifteen thousand dollars?!?! You'll be living in the streets a year from now. You don't have that kind of money!"

Well, apparently they did and we didn't wind up in the streets a year later. But the price tag seemed huge at the time. (In terms of today's dollars, that's roughly $164,000, about what I paid for my house 23 years ago.)

My oldest kid brother, The Olde Vermonter, still lives in the ancestral home (as I call it). He was renting it from my parents after my Dad was moved by his company down to Connecticut. When they moved back to the ancestral lands (Connecticut River valley between Springfield and Charlestown), my Mom wanted to live near her Mom, my grandmother, so my brother bought the house. Dad had no objections, where she was living  was a "senior community" (55 and older) with some really nice amenities. Of course, that all changed after they'd been living there for a couple of years.

The old owners sold out and the new owners turned it into just another trailer park. Kinda sad, I know my Dad was pissed about it. (But as my brothers and I liked to say, "Dad was always pissed off about something." This time he had good reason.)

At any rate, my Dad passed back in 2010, Mom still lives in the place they bought when my grandmother was still alive. It's where we visit now on holidays, when we're not visiting the kids.

With two kids (and their families) out in California, and the third in Maryland, we do travel more than some grandparents. All things being equal, we wind up in Maryland, a lot. It's closer than California, it's cheaper to get there than California. Don't think that the grandkids out west don't notice that, they do. But they understand the whys, if not the distances involved.

But I feel at home at my kids' homes, I feel at home at my Mom's home, and, of course, in my own home.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that home is where you can show up and they let you in, no questions asked, other than maybe, "So, are you hungry?" (And you get fed.) They don't have to let you in, but they do.

That's all I've got today, it's been a strange week.




24 comments:

  1. Sounds great, heart warming.
    Tree Mike

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  2. Yep Sarge, home is where the heart is.

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    1. I came full circle. In 1974, I left the family farm to go to graduate school and to work in GFND. In 1976, my parents left the farm and moved to their "New House" in town (built around 1928) to better care for Mom's aging father. A gentle, comfortable old house. The first night, I felt like I had always lived there. When my folks died, I kept the house up for 27 years as a place to stay when I visited relatives on weekends (like a lake cabin without a lake). When I retired in 2018 (after 44 years) I finally moved back home again. Not too much has been changed. Home Sweet Home.

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    2. The circle remains unbroken, Don. You done good.

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  3. Sarge, very much the same story here (although a little behind you in timing). I grew up living in the same house, on the same street, for my whole, from birth to when I went away to college (then came back, then went away again, then came back). I believe my parents' bought their home in the mid-1960's for the princely sum of $35,000 (which was a stretch at the time).

    Even thought I have not lived their at all since the mid 1990's and my parents moved from that house to The Ranch, this area still remains "home" to me in a way that no-where else I have lived does. All those other places where just locations I lived in (albeit with The Ravishing Mrs. TB, Na Clann, and pets - so home in a different way). Part of it, I suppose, is that pieces and parts of my family have been in this area for over 150 years. In the blood, as it were.

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  4. In the last 6 years I've gone back and seen most of the places I lived as a kid, seven in two states. Couldn't remember/find two...

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    1. I lived in a lot of different places while in the Air FOrce, not as many as some, but I remember most of them.

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  5. Mom said I used to bump my head against the high chair back. In elementary scruel, me and David Cole went home for lunch most days. I lived across the street from school. When we got back, the kids were still in the cafeteria, so we'd sit in the hall and bump our heads against the wall. David could turn his eyelids inside out. He would ask for help on paper if we had a substitute teacher, and when she got close she'd see his eyes. Always got a reaction.

    I moved about as much you did as a kid. Plainview, Lubbock, then out into the county. There is something strangely comforting about the homes we grew up in, isn't there?

    Hey, just this week, I found out I'm a direct descendant of a War of 1812 soldier. Fought at Tippecanoe during his first enlistment and New Orleans during his second. Lived from 1795-1892. That was pretty interesting.

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  6. As an USAF Brat, Home was wherever Mom was. Novato CA, Naha Okinawa. Finley ND, Miles City MT, Norman OK, Novato CA (Dad was in Thule), Big Spring TX, Columbus MS, Las Vegas NV. Then I joined the USAF, home was still where Mom was Las Vegas NV (although Del Rio TX, Alamogordo NM, Phoenix AZ, Kunsan Korea and Valdosta GA were my domiciles). Then I met someone. Home was then Valdosta GA, Alamogordo NM, Kadena AB Japan, FT Leavenworth KS, Hickam AFB HI, Fairfax VA. Then finally, The 'Burg, TX. However, I do get a feeling of nascent home-ish-niss when I visit MBD, MG and The Rev in College Station. I had similar feelings when I visited Little J and LJW in Maryland. I'm sure when the dust settles and his family is reunited in their HK home, I'll feel the same way.

    So, from my point of view, home is not a place, home is family. I'm OK with that.

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    1. Key point, if you're with family, you're home.

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    2. When were you in Marin county?

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    3. We’re you there in M arch/April of ‘62, I can’t remember the dates you once told us.

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    4. Rob/LtFuzz,
      I was born in the Hamilton AFB hospital in '55. Spent a couple of years there. As best I can recall, we moved back there in the first few years of the '60's. I did forget an assignment though in the comment above. Prior to Big Spring, Dad was assigned in Colorado Springs. I recall watching the news from the JFK assassination there, So we probably were in Marin County in '62.

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    5. Thanks for following up, juvat! You da man.

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  7. Lex had in interesting and poignant account of one time he revisited his old childhood home in Richmond.

    I've gone by some of my family's old homesteads, but as time passes, they hold fewer memories, and definitely fewer emotional peaks or valleys. Like Sarge, I've now lived much longer here in my chosen post-retirement location than at any other place in my life. While each has its memories and charms or negative points, they now seem to be less isolated data points, but more of outposts anchoring life's accumulation of geographic and historic knowledge. Context, if you will, for seeking to connect all the other factoids, or perhaps more like barnacles on an old ship's hull, retarding progress. One never knows.
    John Blackshoe.

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    1. I remember that post. I was in Biloxi for training in the summer of '87, the whole family came along. We lived in a nice condo in Long Beach, right across the road from the beach. Went back in '89 for more training, left the family at Offutt. I revisited where we lived, it was something I'll never do again. We weren't there, the place held no meaning. Then Katrina came along some years later, the place we lived was leveled. Completely gone. Kinda sad, really sad for the folks from that area.

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  8. It's wonderful that you still have your mom. Here in San Diego I've driven by the home I lived in from birth to seven, but it looks nothing like it did when I lived there. Now it's got 2 extra bedrooms and a second floor. I'm friends with the family that bought our log cabin in Oregon so I've seen it in person and on Facebook a bunch. It's nice to reminisce and I'm glad I still have a little connection to where I lived as a youth.

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    1. The house I grew up in is different now as well, my brother added an addition after he bought the place. But it's still home as family is still in it.

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