Give me Back my Hometown
This past weekend my hometown threw a big ole music festival. They blocked off part of a parking lot and set up a huge stage, they had food vendors and beer vendors and fancy porta potties (this is important y’all!). And from noon to about ten their was some good music playing with some pretty big names like Zane Williams, Bri Bagwell and Roger Creager closing it out. This is like the third or fourth year that we’ve done this and it’s pretty cool.
Here’s the deal though y’all. I have lived in this (not so small anymore) town for 44 years. I have never had another zip code, I didn’t even go off to college. I’ve moved from one side of the town to the other, then to the middle of it and back to the same exact street I grew up on. That’s what type of town this is, or was. People who grew up here don’t generally leave or if they do they all usually migrate back. We have a great school system, it’s safe all things given and it’s just a nice place to raise kids. I love that I get to see my childhood friends out and about, that I work at the same high school my husband and I both attended and get to see my friends kids coming through.
When Craig and I got married there was no question that we would raise our kids here, the only thing we wished for was land (which has an outrageous price tag in this zip code) but we decided having our kids grow up here was worth it and the land would come later. But, and here’s the biggest but of all and why my realtor friends are gonna get mad at me, lately this town has really changed. My little hometown has gotten rather large. When I have to sit in traffic to get to work which is literally 3 miles up the road, that is really not ok. There are neighborhoods on top of neighborhoods and I really don’t think we could have any more banks to choose from. We’ve had to add additional elementary schools and what once was only green pastures and cows is now gas stations and car washes.
So for someone that has literally lived here her whole life and married someone that grew up here and I work at the one and only high school in town, wouldn’t you think I’d know just about everyone? Well y’all, I stood at that concert in the middle of a throng of people in my hometown and looked around and didn’t recognize one person except the few that I was standing with. I mean I saw a handful as we were walking in the gates and passed by people and stuff but for the most part I knew no one. I could’ve been in any town in the world at that moment, I’ve seen more people I know at a concert when we go to the river in the summer. It was actually a really sad realization, all of a sudden this town that I’ve loved my whole life no longer felt like my hometown. I don’t regret raising my kids here, the education they have received is top notch, they grew up in a safe town without fear, they watched the fourth of July, homecoming and Christmas parades every year from the same exact location in front of our church in the middle of THEIR hometown. But now here Craig and I are with almost all of our kids grown and out of the house and I think we looked around and then at each other and felt the exact same thing. This town that is still a great place to raise kids, where they will receive a superb education with low crime and is close to the beach and the city no longer feels like it once did, she’s changed, she’s bigger and a little less “her” and change isn’t always good, not for me anyway.
Just give me back MY hometown y’all. I really miss her.