What is a “Hometown”? I’ve considered this many times over the years. There appear to be many differing definitions of the word. Is it the place you were born? Maybe the place you grew up? Perhaps where you went to school? Or is it something more tenuous? Something as simple as the place you go back to that makes you feel you’re most comfortable and safe?
Life as a military brat is perhaps a bit different from what could be considered the traditional norm. Rarely do you live in any one place for more than four to five years at the most. You get settled in a place and before you know it, the boxes are there again, getting filled for the next move to a new place. You get used to new schools, meeting new people and learning your way around an unfamiliar city. Life is constantly in motion around you. You get swept up in it, as I imagine any child does with the affairs of their parents. You didn’t sign up for the Service, but you’re born to it and if that’s all you know, you tend not to miss what you don’t know isn’t there.
I was born in a place called Warner Robins, GA. My father was stationed at Robins Air Force Base (AFB) at the time. Shortly after I was born (less than a year) we moved to Pease AFB in New Hampshire. We left there when I was four so the memories are a bit hazey. Lots of snow in the winter and fishing from a bridge with my parents and brother. It was then back to Robins AFB for several more years. I believe I actually made it halfway through 3rd grade there before it was time to pack up again and move off to Bossier City, LA and Barksdale AFB. Another fine base, several lakes for fishing, everything laid out in typical orderly military fashion. About halfway through 7th grade my dad decided it was time to retire from the Air Force and ended up getting hired by Boeing. This resulted in another move from Louisiana to Kent, WA. It was there that I finished out junior high and high school, mostly. During my senior year there came another transfer, this time my dad got moved on to the Space Station project in Huntsville, AL. We eventually settled on living in a small town south of Huntsville. Which is where I originally ended up in Hartselle, AL.
I spent about seven years in Hartselle, longer than any other home I’d ever had. It’s a small town, maybe 12,000 people in the immediate area. It’s actually one of the first places I’ve ever really felt at home. Afterwards I spent a few years in Titusville, FL and then several years in Dothan, AL. But in the end I moved back to Hartselle.
What brings me to this is a conversation I had with someone I know recently. She is originally from Hartselle herself but is not a particular fan of the city. She explained how it was too small, too slow. You can’t go to the store without running into people you’ve known all your life. Maybe that is what actually attracts me to the place. Growing up as I did, I always had friends at school who had lived in their town since they were born. Everyone they knew, they had known all their lives. It was something I had no understanding of outside the people in my immediate family. My parents have hometowns. They have places where they were born and raised. I have a place I was born and a dozen others where I was raised. None of them are home. Home has always been wherever I am right now. By the time I was 18, I’d been through 7 schools and 12 houses. All things considered, I think I could do worse than calling Hartselle my hometown.