Revisiting your hometown

It's been 30+years. No reason to go back. Things are not the same as when I grew up. California is now one fucked up state.

My parents still live in the same house I grew up in, in the same inner-ring suburb, so I see them every few months.

It feels smaller every time I visit. The neighborhood has gotten worse, with kids from the inner city coming to break into cars and houses, and commit the occasional carjacking.

When they trade down--which will happen soon--there will be nothing left for me there.

A couple of years ago I did a drive-by of the town I was raised in. didn’t even get out of the car.

My thoughts from my thirty year huh school reunion was everything looked the same, but when we went to my grade school the place was so much smaller than I remembered it, I guess I was so small then it skewed my perceptions of what it looked like, haven’t been back since, my hometown on Long Island will always be a fond memory of times gone by.

Every year. Sometimes twice a year.

I live in the same town I grew up in, Seattle. Though in a way you can never go back because the development over the past 30 years has been so extreme that it's mostly unrecognizable. It kind of sucks, really. In the 80's and early 90's, we had inexpensive downtown housing that provided space for pensioners and urban poor, and the dive bars and diners that served them were a scruffy incubator for the great art and music scene that eventually brought Seattle to the world stage. Today, all that housing and its related venues are pretty much gone. Instead we have super expensive housing, and trendy restaurants and bars serving the traveling global tech elite. And you can get a boba tea delivered to your apartment 24/7 for $50. Yay progress. I have this fantasy that the big tech companies will contract and leave our city, leaving behind empty spaces that will become run down and cheap over time, while the fancy bars turn into dives. Then Seattle can become scruffy again and something interesting might happen.

Its possible but I'm sure I won't live to see it.

A year or two after I graduated from college, I did go back to my hometown to visit friends. I had time to kill, so I did visit my elementary school.

Contrary to Muddy's comedic point, at that time I was able to just walk into the building and just roam.

A lot of my teachers had retired, but I went to my kindergarten teacher's classroom and she was still there. She looked up from her lesson and recognized me by name immediately, which I found absolutely amazing (if we're being honest, I don't think I was that memorable...).

Anyway, she had me come in and talk to her students about education, school, and college, etc. The kids were mostly stunned that someone so old could have been one of her students. Lol... I was maybe 23 at the time.

Shortly after I graduated high school and off to college my parents moved to a different state so I have only been back 3 times since they moved, and 2 of those times I was just “passing” through heading somewhere else just taking a short detail.

My class reunion got cancelled due to COVID shutdown - I was actually considering going but didn’t loose any sleep over it being cancelled.

I am within 30 minutes of where I grew up, so I drive through it a lot, but only go back to see the 7 different places I lived in the same town once in awhile. In 1948 the USA commissioned a multi-generational heart study to study the disease throughout generations. They searched for the one place that best represented the "average American" town/populace and chose Framingham Mass, the largest town in the country for most of my life. I have a friend from 1974 still whose family is part of it. He pisses me off because both of his parents died young from heart attacks, and he still smokes cigarettes. Anyway, Framingham is still typical America: no English spoken on the south side of town; neighborhoods are crappy; crime is up, school performance through the floor, no more G.M. Plant, no more largest specialty Paper Mfg in the world, grew up in a housing project and it never looked like one to me and I loved living there, but now, I stay in my car.

I live about 20 minutes away from the Boston suburb where I grew up. I'm there every week to play poker with a group of guys I've known my entire life (or at least close to it).

A few times a month. And fuck gentrification

I have mixed feelings about gentrification. My kids are the 4th generation to grow up in our house in Miami Beach (although we replaced the original 1927 house in 2004). My grandfather bought the property in 1946 for $39K - which was quite expensive for those days, but 75 years later, due to gentrification, the property appraises in excess of $10MM. We have seen the Jewish invasion, the Cuban Invasion, and now the Billionaire invasion of Miami Beach. But also because of gentrification I can barely afford to keep up with the property taxes anymore, and sitting on an island in Biscayne Bay, the insurance has become cost prohibitive.

My sister still lives in the town I grew up in, right next to the business my parents started 65 years ago, which she and her ex ran for years after my folks retired.

I was there pretty regularly until COVID hit, and will probably go back next summer.

The elementary school that I attended was renamed, after the principal when I attended. It makes me feel so old. Never knew Crosscheck lived so close to me. IKNOW - quick question are any structures left in Stiltsville? It was our families favorite spot in Biscayne Bay and where my Father's ashes were spread.

I grew up in 7 different towns in 4 states. Not sure what my hometown is. By 21, it was an even 10 cities.

@skibum
Last I was down there in Stiltzville, there were a half dozen or so houses still standing, that was in 2017 or 2018, my buddy lives in Coral Gables, keeps a boat by Monty's, we spent the day fishing and slamming beers on the bay, his family used to own one of those homes, I think you can still go there you might need a permit to actually anchor there, but there are still a few homes standing, amazing ain't it.

I currently live about halfway between my 2 childhood homes, which are both within 12.5 miles of my present location. It's not unusual for me to be in one town or the other 6 times a year. From a nostalgic perspective, my first childhood location provides the better memories! My siblings definitely identify with #2

Yes, there are still a few structures remaining in Stiltsville, but no one lives there. It is part of the Biscayne National Park, and the NPS has boat tours out there, but I don’t know if you are able to get out and walk around on the structures. From what I’ve seen from a distance, it looks like it would be pretty unsafe these days.

I last visited in 2018 with an aunt who has since passed away. Although I can’t see myself moving back to the area I am very proud of my roots.

Why hasn't dipshitscrub posted about his hometown?
Oh he's probably a little embarrassed that he doesn't have a hometown.

You see, it's because his mom was a maggot that fed on roadkill so technically scrub's hometown was just a carcass that doesn't exist anymore because it dried up and blew away like a pile of shit, yep a pile of shit just like dipshitscrub. Ironic synchronicity as eventually dipshitscrub will also dry up and blow away.

He's acutely aware of his fate, that's why he's such a loud mouth punk full of bluster here, he's in denial, trying to act important and trying to cover for his pile of shit existence and that's the reason he hasn't posted here.

I inherited the house I lived in when I turned 7 years old and lived in all through my pre-college years. I go there less than I did before but still go at least once a year. I have a friend that never left and it's funny to see how he practically knows everyone in town. When we were growing up it had a population of about 50K. Now, it has a population of around 100K.

I still see people I knew but I left right after I turned 18 and haven't lived there since. I learned early on that you can't go back home. It's mostly because you change when you live in different places among different people.

After college, I moved back to the area in a town that was a 3 hour drive away. I left after a handful of years to avoid being trapped in my old self.

I go back pretty regularly, several times a year. I even bought back my old childhood house back in 2010, and the one my parents upgraded to midway through my childhood a year later.

In some ways, its exactly the same. In other ways, its nothing alike. Many of the areas I used to play in are now condos or houses. When I was there there was no stoplights on the road, now there's too many to count. Some of the old restaurants and bars are still there, many are gone having been torn up by hurricanes, fires or other disasters. Others bulldozed to make room for bigger structures.

this is worth a replay



Why hasn't dipshitscrub posted about his hometown?
Oh he's probably a little embarrassed that he doesn't have a hometown.

You see, it's because his mom was a maggot that fed on roadkill so technically scrub's hometown was just a carcass that doesn't exist anymore because it dried up and blew away like a pile of shit, yep a pile of shit just like dipshitscrub. Ironic synchronicity as eventually dipshitscrub will also dry up and blow away.

He's acutely aware of his fate, that's why he's such a loud mouth punk full of bluster here, he's in denial, trying to act important and trying to cover for his pile of shit existence and that's the reason he hasn't posted here.

Your residence is your gloryhole at the I-10 truck stop dipshit, that's where you reside.
Get back to sucking those truckers off before you dry up and blow away like the turd that you are maggot boi! Lol

It's been 20-some years, and that was only for a high school class reunion. Turned out I didn't like my classmates any better in 2002 than I did in 1987. I have no need or desire to ever go back, except when I'm on a road trip and it's between me and my destination.