Ever go visit where you grew up and just...remembered?

[Wyatt Burp]

In 1969 when I was 12 we were "eminent domained" (at market value) out of our property for a freeway off ramp that never happened. And to this day, right there in the crowded, congested Bay Area, my old rural street with no sidewalks still looks exactly the same. Years after we moved, my wife, before I met her, lived three doors down. Now the houses are gone.
What a great place to grow up. It just looks like a field here, which it is, but there were surprises. We found a hole that entered a basement of a long gone house. A great fort. One house framework was completely hidden by sticker bushes, but we made a trail into it, me carrying my Mattel Tommy Gun just in case. Behind the trees in back is a deep creek. I played army (I was always Vic Morrow in Combat!) there and in this field, baseball, and rock fights. Kissed my first girl around the second grade in the house up behind those garbage cans.
You ever go back and reminisce where you grew up? And yes. It looks much smaller now.

 

[NYlakesider]

The area I was born and raised in was on the wrong side of the tracks, but all was OK and I have good memories of that time. We moved out of that area late 50s, and it deteriorated at a quick pace a few years later!

Now to go back there it would be a good idea to be in a Bradley or perhaps a Abrams.

 

[WuzzFuzz]

I like many, have went back for a visit from time to time. But I've found the old truism to be pretty profound.


"You cannot go home".


WuzzFuzz

 

[loknload]

I still live in the general area where I grew up! We lost our home the same way you did, for the building of a highway. The land was never utilized and sits vacant until this day. That has left my father a very bitter person because of how the state pressured and threatened for him to sell.
Anyway I do go back from time to time and retrace my steps through the various areas of our past. Some of it remains and some of it has eroded away into posterity!

 

[snubbyfan]

We're gonna be visitin' my Mom and sister next weekend.
We moved out there when I was in fourth grade. Back then it was surrounded by woods and I spent lotsa time wandering around in the woods.
Found an old dirt access road that I usta ride my bike on.

When my Dad died in '97, I moved back home. I moved around a lot back then so it wasn't a big effort. I couldn't stand the thought of my Mom all alone in that house.

The woods and trails were all gone. It had all been developed. Soon after my sister moved back, which was fortunate. I had just been invited by a well endowed redhead to be her "roommate."

My sister still lives there, takin' care of my Mom.
I made a few moves since then, depending on which way the wind was blowing at the time, and finally ended up in a brick house in West Virginia with my Italian wife.

I'm looking forward to visitin' my old stompin' grounds.

 

[steelslaver]

I get back to my home town every couple years now that I moved back to Montana. When I do I always spend a least a hour driving around and traveling memory lane.

 

[Marshwheeling]

The first place I lived was in Northeast Minneapolis in a quonset hut in a complex set up as housing for ex-servicemen. The area is now a city park with several ball fields.

The next place, one I actually remember, was in a rural area. There is now a drive-thru bank on the site. The farm across the road has been replaced by a large shopping mall.

 

[bagga]

i go back to the city park my friends and i would hang out at as kids and once or twice a year i go, just to walk around or have a lunch there. if the friends decide to do something together we'll meet "at the park". those friends are my friends yet today and we try to get together a few times a year.

 

[WuzzFuzz]

You know, reading some of the above posts, remembering their places where they grew up, and it came to me....The song of the Green Grass of Home.

Remembering how it was, once, but then awaking to the reality of where we really are at this time in our life.


WuzzFuzz

 

[Wyatt Burp]

i go back to the city park my friends and i would hang out at as kids and once or twice a year i go, just to walk around or have a lunch there. if the friends decide to do something together we'll meet "at the park". those friends are my friends yet today and we try to get together a few times a year.

I drive by just such a park, too, when i'm back there. I proposed to my first wife there. Nothing particularly sentimental about that, though. Just thought I'd mention it.

 

[waxman]

I never left. Never had a reason to leave. I live a block away from the hospital I was born in.

 

[mike from st pete]

There isn't much I miss from NJ and I'm never going back there, PERIOD!

 

[finesse_r]

I am sorry to hear that you were uprooted, and worse for no good reason at all. I doubt it helps, but you were not alone in being forced off your childhood home site.

During that time in the USA millions of Americans, especially in the south and west, were forced or pushed off their homes not only by the government, but also by social change ideologues with the backing of the government. The once quiet and peaceful little subdivision I grew up in was turned into a Ghetto almost over night and remains so to this day. Where as a child I once walked the streets with no worry or concern even late at night, today it is worth your life to venture down those same streets even in day light.

Eminent domain was not the only ugly tool of change employed in the 1960's and 1970's.

 

[Beemerguy53]

The Baltimore neighborhood where I lived as a child -- in the 1950s and early 1960s -- is now a slum, where many of the homes are boarded up, burned out, and vacant, and where young drug dealers ply their trade and shoot each other.

The rowhome house I lived in was built around 1916. It was beautiful! I remember the French doors leading to the dining room, that big old clawfoot tub in the bathroom, and the pantry off the kitchen. It breaks my heart to think about what's become of that community in the last several decades...

 

[Harkrader]

Unfortunately, yes.
Still hate the place.

 

[cmort666]

My first neighborhood in Chicago looks like the pictures of Fallujah that I've seen.

I went back there a few years ago. Nothing and nobody there I want anything to do with.

 

[johngalt]

I grew up in a small town in west central IL, population about 4000. Prosperity has long since past it by, it is little there now. No opportunity at all. In hindsight, my parents moving us away from there was a very good decision. I haven't been back for probably over 30 years.

 

[sureshotbob]

The place I grew up in would be classed as a low income project today.
But it was a great place to grow up as it sat on 55 acres there were 2 4 unit buildings a 8 unit building and 6 single family homes.
There were plenty of kids to play baseball and football also many a game of hide and seek. There was a field that was about 600 yards long behind the houses and a sand pit that was a great shooting range.
There also were a few ponds and lot's of woods for boy's to build forts and hunt.
I moved away in 1982 and sadly it has been torn down and developed or grown over.

 

[mojave30cal]

I grew up in the mid- 1940's to mid-1960's on the windward
(east) side of the island of Oahu in a small community called
Kaaawa. It had an elementary school, and a couple of mom
and pop stores. My house was in the small grouping of houses
in the lower right side of the picture. We were about 200 yards
from the beach. Very rural and unspoiled to this day. Largest
job provider is Kualoa Ranch which owns most of the land
pictured in the valley and the area to the left of the picture.
Lots of well known movies like Jurassic Park were filmed in
the valley. We hiked in the valley, went surfing, fishing, free
diving, canoe paddling, swimming etc. It was rough.

My brother owns the house now, and when I visit, a drive
out to the country is on the agenda. In fact, my girlfriend and
I are visiting family for Christmas, so Kaaawa is on the agenda.

 

[Big Cholla]

January, 1970 my wife and I visited Hawaii from our home in Anchorage. I rented a Cessna 172 and we flew completely around Oahu. I was particularly taken by the beauty of your valley and I flew the length of it twice just sightseeing. What a picturesque place. We landed at the little airstrip near North Shore Beach and watched the surfers for a spell. Great memories of that flight. ...........