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

[oldRoger]

I grew up in a small town in West Michigan pop 1200, we moved 60 miles away just before my senior year in HS.
I drove back several times to visit right after we moved then the military, college, and life intervened.
After I retired I had a chance to stay near the old home town for a week, so away I went. I decided to take my bike and ride around to the old places I knew.
The town looks basically the same on the surface but; the houses we lived in are gone. Most of my friends’ houses are gone. Many of the businesses I knew are gone. The grade and high school (combined in one building) was closed and in bad condition.
There was no one I knew in the phone book.

It was a sad visit, probably just as well that I did not meet anyone I knew.

If I had stayed around the area the changes would have been gradual, as it was I agree; you can’t go home anymore, especially if you have been away for 50 years.

 

[RobertJ.]

I live about a mile from where I was born. We're overlooking the river at the north end of town, with a view of the bridge my cousins and I fished from when we were little.

I've lived all over the PNW, but moved back here 10 years ago, and it's like I was never gone at all.

 

[mike from st pete]

I grew up in a small town in West Michigan pop 1200, we moved 60 miles away just before my senior year in HS.
I drove back several times to visit right after we moved then the military, college, and life intervened.
After I retired I had a chance to stay near the old home town for a week, so away I went. I decided to take my bike and ride around to the old places I knew.
The town looks basically the same on the surface but
It was a sad visit, probably just as well that I did not meet anyone I knew.
If I had stayed around the area the changes would have been gradual, as it was I agree; you can’t go home anymore, especially if you have been away for 50 years.

The Village of Fruitport?

 

[Art Doc]

I now own the house in California where I grew up. It hasn't changed much in the 51 years since we moved in (1964). The neighborhood has changed dramatically. It was a middle class street with 100% white residents and now it's about 60% brown and 40% black and if any white people live there I don't see them.

It's rental property and a property management company takes care of it for me. I have driven by it once since I inherited it 4 years ago. I find it very depressing to go there. Reminds me how old I've gotten and how everyone in my family is dead. I'm the last one still living. My mother was my last surviving relative and she died on Christmas Day 2011. Kinda ruined the holiday for me.

 

[oldRoger]

mike from St. Pete

Not Fruitport, although I have been there I grew up in Scottville.

 

[chief38]

The neighborhood where I grew up (a suburb of NYC - Queens) was originally terrific but around the early 1970's became a virtual war zone! I have passed through there a few times since moving out in the early 1970's but would never think of stopping and getting out of my vehicle - not even armed!

About a year or so ago I drove through with my best friend of 59 years who actually lived next door to me there while growing up. We just shook our heads in disbelief as our eyes filled with tears of memories and great times. I would not have driven through after Dusk!

 

[Donn]

Moved from Detroit to the suburbs in 1955. Lived in the same little ranch house till I was drafted in '69. The folks moved to bigger digs in the early 70's. Fast forward to 2010. Imagine my surprise when I drove past the old house only to find a vacant lot. Seems the people who bought it from my folks let it slip into such disrepair the City of Warren condemned it, tore it down along with the garage and the huge maple tree in the yard Dad and I planted as a seedling. Time marches on, not always kindly.

 

[Don 73]

Does BUYING the house you grew up in count?

 

[DWalt]

During most of my years of growing up, I lived in a medium-sized city in Southern Ohio. It was very prosperous at that time - a large steel mill and two large shoe factories, plus a lot of support businesses, large and small, plus some huge railroad yards and a Uranium enrichment facility. But due to foreign imports, most of those businesses had vanished by the 1970s. Unless you were a doctor or lawyer, if you lived there, your main source of income was either welfare or social security (and I understand drug dealing is now a big income producer), and that hasn't changed much. I haven't been back for the last 15 years, but it was pretty sad then, and I imagine it hasn't changed for the better. It's a beautiful place to live if you had enough money so that you didn't have to worry about finding a job. I don't think I have any friends or relatives still living there, as they have all either died or moved away.

 

[Walter Rego]

I had a rather remarkable experience just a few weeks ago. I went with my siblings to upstate NY for a family reunion. I had only been back there a few times since moving to CA in 1965. One afternoon my brother and I decided to cruise the old neighborhoods for a look. We stopped in front of a house that we last lived in in 1962. As we were standing out front, the couple that owned it came walking down the driveway. We explained who we were and got to talking with them about the neighborhood, which is as close to unchanged as you could imagine and still very well kept up and in a desirable part of town, and telling them about the house as we remembered it. The couple very graciously said "would you like to see inside ?" My brother and I looked at each other as our jaws dropped, and said yes, if it wasn't an imposition. Other than the carpet having been removed to reveal the original 1929 hardwood floors, bathroom & kitchen remodels and the 1950's era wallpaper removed in a couple of rooms, the house was as we remembered it.
We went up to see our old bedroom, down in the basement, and all around the house. They owners got a kick out of hearing our memories which after 53 years were still rather vivid.

Now on the flip side, the home we moved to in SouCal in 1965 is now in one of the worst cities in the state and uninhabitable as far as I'm concerned.