"You Can't Go Home Again"

[Slater]

This was the title of a novel by Thomas Wolfe, and Wikipedia has this entry on the topic:


"Wolfe took the title from a conversation with the writer Ella Winter, who remarked to Wolfe: "Don't you know you can't go home again?" Wolfe then asked Winter for permission to use the phrase as the title of his book.

The title is reinforced in the denouement of the novel in which Webber realises: "You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time – back home to the escapes of Time and Memory."

The phrase “you can’t go home again” has entered American speech to mean that once you have left your country town or provincial backwater city for a sophisticated metropolis you cannot return to the narrow confines of your previous way of life and, more generally, attempts to relive youthful memories will always fail."


Anyone ever return to the place years (or decades) later that you maybe grew up in and felt somehow disappointed, or, conversely, that nothing has changed? Talking to guys my own age (I'm 54), some of them expressed surprise (and occasionally dismay) that their old hometown wasn't exactly as they'd left it 30 or 40 years before. I guess we all want those things to remain constant.

[FromMyColdDeadHand]

My family still lives in the same suburb. My brothers friends are his friends from HS. His kids play on teams where the dad's were teammates. We live where my wife grew up, my kids go to her grade-school. It's weird to go back to visit my family since my father died and it looks the same, the people are the same, but everything is different. It's kind of like happiness in general, you really only experience it past and fleetingly in the present.

It's interesting because I understand the subtext when I visit my family and town, but I know there are all kinds of interactions and assumptions based on my wife's past that I can never fully appreciate.

My wife puts up with us going up to Grand Lake for a long weekend in the summer since it is the largest natural lake in CO and reminds me of being a kid and going to my family to Northern Wisconsin.

They say that your life changes every seven years, and that was true so far for me. I wouldn't have been able to pick where I did end up if I was given it as an option seven years before that- until now. Same house, same job, same girl, same kids for seven years+.

[SteyrAUG]

For a long time I found the opposite to be true. My home had become my grandparents house and I was always welcome. I was fortunate that they both lived long lives into their 80s and 90s and every time I returned to Iowa things were "mostly" the same.

Everything changes, but thankfully they don't seem to change as fast in Iowa. It was always a place where I could still know the name of the family that lived at every third house no matter what part of town I was in. Most of the things I grew up with were still there.

Of course now that my grandmother recently passed and the house has been sold things are different. My grandfather gave me a key to the house back in 1981 and I had kept it all these years. The current owner graciously allowed the family into the house (as he's currently restoring and upgrading it and not actually living there) since it is still full of items belonging to my family.

I grabbed the things that were most important to me two years ago when I found out the house would be sold so I really didn't find much else this time around, it was more of a "one last walk through" than anything else. I pulled out my wallet and tried the old key, it was kinda sad to realize the locks had been changed. Really drove home the point that this was no longer ours.

[Outlander Systems]

Here in Atlanta, you could leave for six months and the place would look totally different.

I went back to where I grew up in Middle Tennessee a couple of years ago, and it was literally like going back in a time machine...it was incredible. There's a lot to be said for that.

[Averageman]

The fat old lady in front of you at "Home Depot" used to be the hawt cheerleader in H.S.
That's enough to keep you from ever even wanting to go back home again.
I stop in a couple of times a year, I can't ever leave fast enough.

[FromMyColdDeadHand]

The fat old lady in front of you at "Home Depot" used to be the hawt cheerleader in H.S.
That's enough to keep you from ever even wanting to go back home again.
I stop in a couple of times a year, I can't ever leave fast enough.

Luckily, they make new cheerleaders very year...



Too creepy? Why is it funny when Matthew McConaughey says it?

[BoringGuy45]

The fat old lady in front of you at "Home Depot" used to be the hawt cheerleader in H.S.
That's enough to keep you from ever even wanting to go back home again.
I stop in a couple of times a year, I can't ever leave fast enough.

Ain't that the truth. There was a girl a year ahead of me in high school I'll call Jane. Jane was gorgeous and had the most perfect body I've seen. Fast forward 10 years, I saw her name on Facebook, expecting her to be a swimsuit model or something. Holy crap, I'm sorry I clicked on her name. Her face looks about 30 years older than her, she's put on a "couple" pounds (and by a couple I mean about 200), and she generally looks like someone from the cast of Honey Boo Boo. A few girls I knew in high school have lost their looks a little bit, but the floor just dropped out from underneath poor Jane...in her case, probably literally.

But it's very true, you really can't go home, I've learned. One needs to accept that things change and so do you. For me personally: Of my four best friends from high school, only one still lives anywhere near my hometown. All the rest, including myself, have left, and the one remaining is planning on leaving too whenever he gets a new job (the school where he teaches is probably going to close this year or next). I had a falling out with one of the other four as well, and though we made a bit of a truce, we haven't spoken in 7 years. Of my entire church youth group from the years I was there, all have moved far away with the exception of a very small few. Nobody moves to our town and everyone moves out when they grow up, as there's no jobs except family farms and Ma and Pa businesses. It's weird; there's nothing ever new in the town, but it's still different then from when I remember it. Life in a sleepy town is more fun when you're a kid and things are more epic.

When I went back to visit for Christmas this past year, I was happy to see my family and the friends who were still there, but it was sad to come back to a place that I'm slowly no longer recognizing. Once my parents leave, I'll have no reason at all to ever go back. It's okay though; I'm happier where I am now; there's more opportunity, more stuff to do, and people are generally nicer. I'm okay with looking back more fondly on those times than I probably did when they were actually occurring. There's nothing wrong with escaping into memories from time to time, so long as you don't hold onto them and refuse to accept the present.

[markm]

I'm lucky to be able to ride skateboards with my son in some of the same places I used to ride 25 years ago. We go to the same skate shop and the smell of new shoes, clothes, equipment is completely unchanged. It's very soothing.

[Doc Safari]

My best friend that I've known since 1986 doesn't return my phone calls lately. I always knew he was "left of center" politically, but ever since his mom died in the late 1990's he slowly turned hardcore liberal, a la Michael Moore and the extremist left wing. We had been playing phone tag since I'm busy with my girlfriend quite a bit of the time. Then this past Christmas I had to tell him as gently as I could that because of the economy and my income being less than the year before that I wouldn't be able to afford to get him a Christmas present. I haven't heard from him since. I've left messages on his machine, but no return phone calls.

Another one of my friends died just before Christmas in 2013, and a third friend got a job in South Carolina and moved away for good.

If not for my girlfriend I wouldn't have anyone of my own age to be with.

The town where I grew up is getting to be so big now that I'm starting to want to move somewhere else. It used to be that traffic was light any time of the day or night. Now it's like the big city at rush hour.

I occasionally run into people I went to high school with. They invariably look horribly old (we're in our fifties). I never run into an old girlfriend or acquaintance and say, "Wow, she's still hot." Usually my reaction is "Man, she hasn't aged well."

[SteyrAUG]

I'm lucky to be able to ride skateboards with my son in some of the same places I used to ride 25 years ago. We go to the same skate shop and the smell of new shoes, clothes, equipment is completely unchanged. It's very soothing.

That's the important stuff.

[williejc]

The timber has been clear cut; four wheelers have damaged stream beds; their riders have littered once clean areas; and crime has come to the country. So I visit the rural cemetery where friends and family have rested for 150 years.

[Dienekes]

When my kids were small I would occasionally visit my Dad up in the small town on the northern border where I grew up. For a while when I'd walk around town I'd "see" things as they were when I was small; except that as time went on it was obvious that the decades were piling up. I buried my father next to my mother there ten years ago and the house was sold. We own a couple of cemetery plots there but the truth is that I went away to school at age 13; then college, service, and LEO; and so my actual time there from that time to this was minimal. Most people I knew are gone now, and no reason to "go back". A lot of my memories now feel like things that happened to someone else long ago--and the bad stuff doesn't matter much anymore anyway.

I retired early and decided (correctly) that my money would go further in Wyoming than Montana, and I could have the lifestyle I wanted in either place. A preschool grandson keeps me in the here and now, and God willing I will stay healthy enough to use all the guns that clutter up my safe.

The only "home" that concerns me any more is this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_uFq5BYays

[Coal Dragger]

I left home in Missouri at 18, did my first year of college, the the USMC, reserves, more college, Iraq, and a couple of years living in Springfield, MO. After Iraq I wanted a change of location and career. So I got a job railroading in western South Dakota into Wyoming and haven't looked back.

Haven't been home in over a year, probably won't make it back this year either. I haven't lived closer than 100 miles to where I'm from since I was 18.

[Averageman]

Ain't that the truth. There was a girl a year ahead of me in high school I'll call Jane. Jane was gorgeous and had the most perfect body I've seen. Fast forward 10 years, I saw her name on Facebook, expecting her to be a swimsuit model or something. Holy crap, I'm sorry I clicked on her name. Her face looks about 30 years older than her, she's put on a "couple" pounds (and by a couple I mean about 200), and she generally looks like someone from the cast of Honey Boo Boo. A few girls I knew in high school have lost their looks a little bit, but the floor just dropped out from underneath poor Jane...in her case, probably literally.

The last time I saw that many Chins was at a Chinese family reunion.

[markm]

That's the important stuff.

I think it's saved my life.. or saved me from snapping or doing something counter productive. There's been times when EVERY other thing is going wrong... Shitty Job, Nutbag Wife, etc.... and we head out and kill it for two hours. Huge stress relief.

[Ed L.]

I'm lucky to be able to ride skateboards with my son in some of the same places I used to ride 25 years ago. We go to the same skate shop and the smell of new shoes, clothes, equipment is completely unchanged. It's very soothing.

That is very cool. Both you and your son are lucky.

[Ed L.]

Here is another thought on the thread. I'm around Steyr's age, and back then things were much simpler.

Life in general was simpler for most folks, and it was especially simpler for kids. I imagine life is always simpler for kids since there is not enough to worry about and not as much responsibilities--unless you are living in some type of abusive home situation or poverty.

[chuckman]

I grew up on Camp Lejeune. Was stationed there, too. A few years ago I drove the family through the neighborhood in which I grew up...and it wasn't there. Major bummer.

The town I grew up in after my dad retired from the Marines is only 10 miles from where I live now. I lived there until December, 1999, when I got married. The town remains small but taken over by a very young and liberal population, moving out from a nearby college town. Property prices have skyrocketed, micro brews replaced hardware stores, kitchy art dealers now sit where the soda fountain-drug store was. I mourn the loss of my town, and no, I can never go back. It can never be the same place it was when I was a boy, and not only because of the reasons I mentioned, but also because as I get older I make more, and different, memories.

[glocktogo]

This was the title of a novel by Thomas Wolfe, and Wikipedia has this entry on the topic:


"Wolfe took the title from a conversation with the writer Ella Winter, who remarked to Wolfe: "Don't you know you can't go home again?" Wolfe then asked Winter for permission to use the phrase as the title of his book.

The title is reinforced in the denouement of the novel in which Webber realises: "You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time – back home to the escapes of Time and Memory."

The phrase “you can’t go home again” has entered American speech to mean that once you have left your country town or provincial backwater city for a sophisticated metropolis you cannot return to the narrow confines of your previous way of life and, more generally, attempts to relive youthful memories will always fail."


Anyone ever return to the place years (or decades) later that you maybe grew up in and felt somehow disappointed, or, conversely, that nothing has changed? Talking to guys my own age (I'm 54), some of them expressed surprise (and occasionally dismay) that their old hometown wasn't exactly as they'd left it 30 or 40 years before. I guess we all want those things to remain constant.

I grew up on a cattle ranch outside a small town of 3,500. It's now a bustling suburb of 45,000 and my childhood home was razed for a housing development. I've been halfway around the world and yet I live exactly 1.3 miles North of where I was born and raised. It isn't the same, but it's OK in a different way.

[J8127]

I won't have to be 56 to notice, the first time I went home after joining the military I was like 22 or 23 with 2-3 tours. All my friends were overweight, needed to shave, and going nowhere. All the girls got married to these losers and got knocked up and stayed fat. They will all die within the same city limits they were born in. This happened in like 5 years, it was completely mind blowing and I haven't been back.

[SteyrAUG]

I think it's saved my life.. or saved me from snapping or doing something counter productive. There's been times when EVERY other thing is going wrong... Shitty Job, Nutbag Wife, etc.... and we head out and kill it for two hours. Huge stress relief.

Best of all, I'm betting it will be some of the greatest moments of your son's life as well. Now that he's gone, some of the fondest memories I have of my father are little things that most would think insignificant at the time.

Watching our favorite sci fi shows (Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, The Night Stalker, In Search Of..., etc.), truly enjoying pizza in a way nobody else could quite relate to, making chocolate malts in the blender and things like that are as important as any of the things he might have given me as a gift. I wish I could trade a few of the "things" for "more time."

He had his faults, failures and regrets but if I could get a "do over" I wouldn't want any other father, I'd only want to help him have fewer failures and regrets. I could live with all his faults.

[TXBK]

I live in the town where I grew up. I moved off and lived other places for a little while, but when it was time for a family it was time to go home. It's funny, but the more things have changed, the more they stay the same. The faces are ever-changing, but the people are a only minute reason why I enjoy living where I consider my home to be. My connection is with the land, and that is what I hold on to. I even bought my one of my grandparent's homes, even though it is a little closer to town than I would rather be. Most of my old friends left and never come back, and considered it to be a twisted place. They had no connection to the land, only the people. I have new and better friends now from my travels. Most of my family is still here too. I still drive by the homes I grew up in from time to time, when I am feeling nostalgic.

Home is where you make it.

[Doc Safari]

My girlfriend lives in a housing development. I was reminded this weekend that her home is a stone's throw from where my grandparents' farm used to be. That's got to be the ultimate epiphany as far as how much things have changed.

[SteyrAUG]

My girlfriend lives in a housing development. I was reminded this weekend that her home is a stone's throw from where my grandparents' farm used to be. That's got to be the ultimate epiphany as far as how much things have changed.

Doesn't take long does it.

In my parents/grandparents town there was a swanky hotel built in 1928 on Main street in the middle of the uptown business district. Even in the 1970s we used to go there Sunday morning for the breakfast buffet and it was still an exclusive address.

By the late 1980s it had become low income housing and by the late 90s was a derelict building. There is currently a renovation project being attempted, we'll see.

[Doc Safari]

Did you ever run into a gun you used to own?

Many years ago a friend of mine ran into an HK91 he used to own. He knew it was his because he hand-painted the camo pattern and it had the heavy bipod mounted at the rear of the handguards. IIRC most were made with the bipod at the front of the handguards or something like that. This was during the 1994 Clinton ban panic when people cleaned out their closets and took everything that might be mistaken for an assault weapon to a gun show for big bucks.

My buddy had plans to take his entire gun collection to the gun show to try to trade for an HK91--ANY HK91. Unfortunately (and I'm NOT making this up!), all of his guns were stolen by his girlfriend's ex-husband the night before the gun show.

So my buddy walked into the show, already discouraged and disillusioned, rationalizing that he probably wouldn't find an HK91 anyway. So there on a table was unmistakeably HIS old HK, and he didn't have anything to trade or buy it with.

He was inconsolable for days.

[Turnkey11]

I left home in Missouri at 18, did my first year of college, the the USMC, reserves, more college, Iraq, and a couple of years living in Springfield, MO. After Iraq I wanted a change of location and career. So I got a job railroading in western South Dakota into Wyoming and haven't looked back.

Haven't been home in over a year, probably won't make it back this year either. I haven't lived closer than 100 miles to where I'm from since I was 18.

Do you ever make it as far east as Capa?

[brickboy240]

Where I grew up (from birth to age 13....I am 49 now) was in north Dallas. Today, the place is a total slum and very run down. Corner stores are either boarded up or check cashing places or ratty pawn shops. It is actually depressing to go back to that part of Dallas. I am also shocked at how developed it is north of this place - wow how Dallas grew! LOL

When I was a kid in the 70s, it was almost like a small town and not part of Dallas or a big city.

My wife grew up in Monroe, LA and when we go back there today, she says it is like going back in time. Oh there are some new stores and other modern things but she says it still has an old small town feel. She is nostalgic about her home town today...mine is depressing and I avoid going there when in Dallas because it is unsettling.

[FromMyColdDeadHand]

I won't have to be 56 to notice, the first time I went home after joining the military I was like 22 or 23 with 2-3 tours. All my friends were overweight, needed to shave, and going nowhere. All the girls got married to these losers and got knocked up and stayed fat. They will all die within the same city limits they were born in. This happened in like 5 years, it was completely mind blowing and I haven't been back.

I looked at my family and realized that the further an uncle lived from Buffalo, the better off they were. Now that may have been a Buffalo thing, it may have been an Uncle thing- but I made sure that when I graduated college I didn't go home. I had no job, had been turned down for med school, housing running out at the end of the month- and for some reason I pulled a Spartan "No Retreat" attitude. Ah, youth.

I still live the furthest away from Buffalo.

[Pi3]

The trees got bigger & the houses seemed to have gotten smaller.