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.
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.
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
Last edited by Dienekes; 03-17-15 at 01:11.
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.
"What would a $2,000 Geissele Super Duty do that a $500 PSA door buster on Black Friday couldn't do?" - Stopsign32v
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.
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.
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.
What if this whole crusade's a charade?
And behind it all there's a price to be paid
For the blood which we dine
Justified in the name of the holy and the divine…
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.
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