|
Post by Cornflake on Jun 19, 2008 21:20:34 GMT -5
We had a thread on this years ago.
I was thinking today that it's hard to believe that I have spent the bulk of my adult life in Phoenix, Arizona.
I grew up in Texas, spending the early years in the arid southern part and my later years in rainy, humid Houston. College was in New York. Law school took me back to Texas (Austin). That's when plans got made.
It's common for law students to spend the summer after their second year of law school working for firms they may go to work for. My assumption had been that I would work in either Houston or New York, the two places I knew. When I thought about it, though, I realized I had little interest in spending a summer in either place, both of which I knew well. I got an offer of summer employment from a firm in Phoenix. I took it on the theory that it would be an adventure. I'd spent very little time in the west.
The firm I worked for that summer was very good at wooing recruits. We took three trips to the high country, two to locales in Arizona and one to Utah. I fell in love with the country.
Back for my third year of law school, I still expected to take a job in New York or Houston. I remember a trip to Houston for a job interview where I got caught in a traffic jam that soured me on the place. I interviewed in New York just as an article came out in Esquire about how miserable life was for associates in big New York firms. I finally decided, despite all my expectations, to take the job in Phoenix.
After two years, I was ready to leave. I don't like hot weather and Phoenix was not really my kind of place. Then I met and married my wife. She's a Phoenix native. Whenever I discussed the possibility of living anywhere else, she thought it would be too cold.
Through such flukes I've spent about thirty years here. If anyone had told me when I was 22 that I would spend most of my adult life in Phoenix, Arizona, I would have laughed.
What about you?
|
|
|
Post by billhammond on Jun 19, 2008 21:49:43 GMT -5
Growing up in Eau Claire, Wis., provided a nice balance of small-town Midwesternism and big-city life, with the Twin Cities 90 miles away. My dad's brother and his family lived in a Minneapolis suburb, and we visited them at least once a year. At home, we got the St. Paul daily paper in addition to the local rag, and we were able as of about 1960 to get most of the Twin Cities TV stations thanks to a primitive cable system.
I always liked the Twin Cities but I never imagined living there, for some reason, because we Cheesers have a strong tendency to remain Cheesers. I mean, how could a Packers fan ever live in Vikings country??? And although I had seen a lot of the country and a fair slice of foreign lands, too, when I was nearing the end of my Navy hitch in 1973 I pretty much knew I would be going to college somewhere in Wisconsin, where I would get low in-state tuition AND GI Bill (and a scholarship, too, as it turned out).
So I chose the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, a newish college that had its good points and bad, was only about four hours away from my hometown and offered me easy access to Milwaukee, Chicago and Michigan's Upper Peninsula for recreational grins.
I met the woman I was to eventually marry at UW-GB, but when I finally settled on journalism as a course of study, I had to get out of there because their J-school was not good, not good at all. The best place for me turned out to be Eau Claire, because not only did they have a good J-school, but I was able to land a pre-transfer summer job at the local newspaper as a reporter/photographer, a position I started in 1975 and kept until I graduated a couple years later.
That daily-paper experience and my older age from four years of Navy gave me a leg up on other J-grads and allowed me to get hired right out of school at a metro daily, whereas most of my co-grads went to smaller papers, if to a newspaper at all. I was hired by the Milwaukee Sentinel and began copyediting there in 1978.
Milwaukee was new to me, I was single, had a reliable car and a decent job and I had a lot of bachelor fun there. In 1981, a former Sentinel staffer who had gotten a job at the Minneapolis Star recommended me to the bosses there when they needed some new hires for a copydesk expansion they were undergoing, and I was hired, almost doubling my income in switching jobs.
Plus I was back on the 45th parallel, close to my family again and reconnected with some of my high school and college buddies. I also reconnected with that woman I mentioned earlier, who had moved back to her homeland in New England by then. She came out to Minnesota for a visit over New Year's '81-'82, we had a whirlwind re-courtship after not seeing each other for nearly five years, and got married two months later.
It didn't take me long to fall in love with the Twin Cities, Minnesota's North Shore, local ski hills, and of course, my darling daughters and spouse made life pretty beautiful, as well.
I'm glad, though, that I am not a native Minnesotan, as they tend to be a bit parochial, and think nothing of driving four hours to lake cabins and resorts in the flat, boring northern part of the state when one hour east of them are the amazing green hills and lakes of Wisconsin, and all those back roads and charming little communities I know so well.
Shhhh. Don't tell anyone.
|
|
|
Post by Cornflake on Jun 19, 2008 21:52:47 GMT -5
There's much there I didn't know, Bill.
|
|
|
Post by roylundelius on Jun 19, 2008 22:03:51 GMT -5
Born here, lived here and die here, that be it.
|
|
|
Post by Cornflake on Jun 19, 2008 22:08:23 GMT -5
"Born here, lived here and die here, that be it. "
There's much to be said for that.
I once got together with a friend from high school who had also moved out of state. He mentioned how he and I wouldn't be going to baseball games with people we'd known since we were kids, and that was a price we'd pay for relocating.
Also (as I've mentioned before), when I decided to move to Phoenix, my grandmother asked, somewhat incredulously: why would you want to move somewhere where nobody knows you and nobody loves you? It was a very good question.
|
|
|
Post by jdd on Jun 19, 2008 22:20:10 GMT -5
Since my draft number was 11 I enlisted for three, got lucky and went to Korea instead of Nam. After discharge I went back there in the peace corps as a TB worker. Followed that with six years of school in Urbana (linguistics/communications). Then china for a year, taiwan for almost that again, and another year in korea. After a short break on the big isle, two years in tokyo where I met my wife, and after our contracts there expired, we moved here to her hometown--almost 21 years here now.
((Apart from a couple part-times in high school, I've only had three sustaining jobs in or for the US: the army, peace corps, and as a TA in grad school. Tho I keep in touch with the IRS, my credit sheet is probably one of the emptiest/blankest in the country.))
|
|
|
Post by sidheguitarmichael on Jun 19, 2008 23:19:34 GMT -5
Keleren and I both grew up around these parts, going to the same high school in Pullman, just south of here. Both of our families remain in the little college burg, so we always intended to stay close, and Spokane is the biggest place this side of the state. After a brief stint owning a business in a Spokane mall (don't ask) we shucked that life for the one much more satisfying; writing and performing music together. After winning a grant from Jim Beam Brands wwd (the bourbon, yes) and getting a decent amount of regional press off of it, we bagged our day jobs, put our stuff in storage, and lived out of our van for 3 years; doing as much as 200 gigs a year. The end of days for that sort of insane "tour until the money runs out" folkloric bardery came in the form of a crapload of voicemails that kicked in with the cell reception on our way out of the redwoods in northern California; Gonzaga needed another guitar instructor, and my name apparently kept coming up.
So I took the gig (as well as the same at another College at the same time) and here we stay.
It's pretty unlikely that we will be moving any time soon: at this point, we are well known locally as performers; I oversee the guitar majors at two Universities; and our garage is now a studio where Kel runs an extremely hot-stuff private voice studio full of award-winning high and junior high school kids. Naturally, the previous sentence indicates ownership of a house; no mean feat for a musician in any location, and one that was made easier by the local (and over-and-done with) buying climate of 6 years ago.
We're pretty much stuck here, but it's a golden life. -MM
|
|
|
Post by Supertramp78 on Jun 19, 2008 23:38:38 GMT -5
Born 30 minutes north of hear, spent afew years in Houston when I was a kid and moved to Dallas when I was in the second grade. We lived in a house that is about 25 minutes south of here. My parents still live there. Kelly grew up in East Texas about 3 hours East of here. We both knew we were going to live in or around Dallas. We know it. She user to come here to shop when she was younger. It's home.
|
|
|
Post by iamjohnne on Jun 20, 2008 5:21:20 GMT -5
My Dad was stationed here in 1960. When we moved here from Texas I found out that my parents had met here when they were both in the AF. Dad was a pilot and Mom was a Flight Nurse. She left the service to become a mommy. Dad retired from here, Turner AFB, in 1964 and we moved to Miami. Mom is still there.
I came back to Georgia for college. Andrew College is a very small Methodist school in Cuthbert GA. That's where I met hubby #1. He was also a student at Andrew, but was from a smaller town about 20 miles away. He had been a student at UGA but dropped out. He did enroll at Andrew and after we married went to West GA College in Carrolton up near Atlanta. That was where Uncle Sam found us. It was 1969. We did the Army thing for 3years. Somehow he missed out on VN but did serve in Korea.
I stayed in Miami while he was overseas. Then when he came back we moved to Ft. Gaines, his hometown. That was where I lost the seventies. The town was so isolated the only radio station was country music and there was no local TV. We only picked up one station, CBS out of Dothan AL.
I finally ran away from home and moved to Albany. I felt like I had come home. And this is where I have been ever since.
|
|
|
Post by theevan on Jun 20, 2008 5:29:32 GMT -5
jdd, I always wondered what landed you in Japan. There you have it. I drew 6 for my draft number, but the draft was ended later that year and my physical was canceled.
|
|
|
Post by theevan on Jun 20, 2008 5:45:41 GMT -5
My folks were both Kansans but hankered for something more & different. I was born in NYC, where my dad was an intern, but I grew up in the SF bay area. After my folks committed suicide there was no local family to take us, so we went to Wichita to live with my grandfather. I was shipped off to military school in a few months. All of that to say I had no sense of either place or family when I went on my own.
I joined a Jesus freak cult (whaddaya expect, I was raised atheist...), and moved around with them for many years. I've lived darned near everywhere. I was in Lake Charles in my waning cult years and moved to Baton Rouge just to get out of that place. I met Nancy at a function in New Orleans at which I was speaking. She was a knockout and I was thoroughly smitten. Little did I know that marrying her would also marry me to a sense of place and family. It's been a blessed transformation and I love this place...the least transient population in the US by a fair bit.
I found the sense of belonging I used to fill with my little sect. I love being part of a big, loud, messy, affectionate, old-school Italian family. Who'd a thunk it?
<on edit> Why I live here is family, pure and simple. And, as Millring put, I have insinuated myself into the local community and very much feel a part of things.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 20, 2008 6:41:52 GMT -5
I was born & raised in the city of Chicago. It's a great place in so many ways. Certainly great music & culture, etc. But back in the mid 80s I was living in Rogers Park & watched the crime rate go way up. Someone I knew was shot & killed at the El station a few blocks from where I lived. One night when I was playing my guitar, I heard some noise outside and saw a gang of guys with baseball bats bashing in car windows. I worked as a waitress at night during this time and I recall every evening walking home past midnight with this intense fear. I was followed home a few times but luckily nothing ever happened. So there was that element... the crime and fear and one reason to want to leave.
The other part of why I started wanting to leave Chicago was that I realized one day that a year passed and I never left the one mile radius of my neighborhood once. Why was I living in this huge city when I didn't really utilize it? I rarely went downtown to the museuems or to all the events in Grant park, etc. In my own neighborhood I had Greek, Korean, Japanese, Italian, Thai, Chinese, Mexican restaurants... music venues that had blues, jazz, folk, classical music... two movie theaters, a theatrical theatre... basically anything I needed I could get within a few blocks from my door.
While that was all well and good--it did make me wonder was the quality of life as good for me? With all the crime, traffic and hassles of big city life? Couldn't I find a similar life elsewhere without the crime and hassles? The tipping point of my decision to move was when it took me nearly as much time to drive from the airport as it did to fly across the country due to all the traffic. Was it worth it??
I began searching for a new home after these realizations and Charlottesville, VA became that nearly 20 yrs ago.
I was doing some seasonal work in upstate NY at the time and met folks from here. After a couple of visits, they needed a roommate and I found a job within a week. I have all of the things I listed I loved about Chicago but no crime. I've never walked the streets in fear here. I can write a check for lunch and walk out the door (not needing three IDs and your mother's maiden name) Yes there is traffic but nothing like Chicagoland.
It turned out to be the wisest choice I've ever made.
|
|
|
Post by paulschlimm on Jun 20, 2008 6:55:50 GMT -5
I'm at the mercy of the Army and the limited ability to chose where we end up. When it came time to leave the UK, I had two viable options. One was the Pentagon, and the other was Fort Leavenworth.
There is nothing wrong with the Pentagon. I mean who wouldn't want to work in a windowless cubby of an office while having at least an hour commute in hellish traffic in order to live anywhere decent? Then there is the attraction of working 12 - 14 hours a day and weekends for a full colonel who wants to be a general officer. Did I mention the Pentagon is near DC, which ranks up there as one of my least favorite places on earth?
So I settled for second place and chose Fort Leavenworth. Sure, I live 14 miles from the office and occasionally have to pass a car or two on the way into work. Sure I get tired of looking at deer, hawks, the Two Dogs on the Back Road (who always seem happy to see me) and the Platte and Missouri Rivers as I drive in. When not on a training mission, it's rare we work a full eight, so I'm challenged to find stuff to do with so much time at home.
Ayuh - should have picked the Pentagram. I mean Pentacle. I mean! Pentagon.
We'll probably stay here when I leave active duty in 18 months or so. I can't find a compelling reason to leave.
|
|
|
Post by mnhermit on Jun 20, 2008 7:40:39 GMT -5
It's all a mistake. I grew up in a suburb of Pittsburgh, PA, watched the amazing sunsets caused by the Edgar Thompson Steel works, but summers were spent (due to father's job) in the high mountains of Colorado which led to my attraction to empty places. When I applied to colleges my first choice was U of Colorado, but the folks convinced me to apply to their alma mater, Wash. St. Univ. - ended up there and inertia kept me there for eighteen years. I fell in love with rolling hills of wheat, raft trips down wild rivers, the illusion of youth of a college town (Pullman) and the open spaces of Eastern Washington. I did miss the trees of the east so when a friend moved to Minneapolis, I visited a number of times and accidentally applied for a job. I got it and moved. Sometimes I wonder why. After the police visited my home in pursuit of an armed robber (who was holed up next door, but the houses looked exactly alike), I decided to move back to the country - found my thirty-seven acres in 1993 and have lived here ever since. I keep threatening to move back to the PacNW, but inertia is a heavy burden.
|
|
|
Post by dickt on Jun 20, 2008 8:02:12 GMT -5
In the area that I grew up and lived for 57 years it was kind of a rare thing to be a "native" The Washington, DC area is a pretty transient population with lots of military, government, and assorted hangers-on. But I'm proud to be a lifelong Virginian and now that I live in a very rural area it feels like I'm even more "Virginian"
Went to HS in Arlington, VA and college at UVa in Charlottesville. My first marriage was while I was in college. I had worked some summer federal jobs--A.I.D. and HEW and the Army and was really a Kennedy kid--working in public service was an honorable thing to me. I tried to get into the federal management intern program in 1972 but Nixon had imposed a ban on all federal hiring so agencies were not filling any vacancies. When I went for some interviews I had three offers--a temporary gig working at HEW running the summer employment program, being a deputy U.S. Marshal, and being a sort of "narc." The narc thing was actually auditing the drug companies who reportedly were manufacturing enough amphetamines for every man, woman and child to have a black beauty or a greenie every day.
Coming out of an interview at HEW and just by sheer happenstance when I met my Dad and sister at the Library of Congress (he was retired from LC) for lunch. Since LOC was legislative, not executive, they had quite a few jobs that I was qualified for. I had never considered working for the "family" business, but here I am today 36 years later. It's a great place to work and it's pretty isolated from a lot of the petty political crap that other agencies have gone through over the last four decades. My Dad worked at LC from 1930-1970 and I've been here 1972-2008. My wife also works here and this summer two of my college age kids are in the Junior Fellows program. The older kid did that four years ago too.
|
|
|
Post by t-bob on Jun 20, 2008 8:23:38 GMT -5
20+ years in NY/CT, 20+ years in Seattle, coming up on 20 here in CA. I see myself somewhere in Central America or northern South America next. Growing up in NYC in the late 40s and 50s was amazing, we lived on 55th St between 5th and 6th Aves. Parents moved to CT (Westport, Ridgefield, and Wilton) for same reason I live in Mill Valley now - family benefits. I ended up in Seattle from CT as a result of playing "pin the tail on the donkey" with a map of America. Got transferred to CA in 1991, and Mill Valley is a terrific place to be for family stuff, but too damn expensive. I am seriously looking at Panama, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Ecuador, or northern Brazil (the language is a toughie there tho)as the next stop in my life. My wife and I could live very well on our SS checks alone - the equity/rental income in our houses here would be play money, and dollars for Graham's education.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 20, 2008 11:11:56 GMT -5
I didn't realize that the land had such a powerful grip on me, Cornflake. When I left home at 17 to go to school in Maryland, I had pretty well decided I'd never be back, except to visit family. I was thinking, I suppose, of the life I had as so rural and unsphisticated that I'd best hide it. I'd even avoid directly answering the inevitable questions of "where are you from" during school. I'd just deflect it by saying "here, for now", or something equally ambiguous. I really didn't want to reveal myself as some kind of clueless hick. But, I'm sure it showed...
Then came about 9 years of active duty. Got to live in several nice places, and enjoyed them all. My wife and I still never discussed or considered coming back home. Then, we took about two weeks leave, and flew in to Missoula from South Carolina. We tried to be aloof, I suppose. Borrowed a friends motorcycle, went cmping with our baby, spent time with folks we went to school with. When the plane left, it headed south over the Bitterroot, and we watched our valley disappear from the air. More in tears than words, we both knew we had to come back. I was out of the navy within a year, and attending law school at UM.
I remember we had entertained thoughts about living in suburban DC after the navy. Lot of jobs, and the area appealed to us. Until we went home again. The next time we visited some friends in Silver Springs, we both kind of thought "what the hell were we thinking"? It wouldn't have worked for us.
It's not about scenery, and we found wonderful people everywhere. It's hard to describe what it is in words that makes a particular piece of geography speak to you.
|
|
|
Post by majorminor on Jun 20, 2008 12:44:12 GMT -5
I grew up in Alaska on the Kenai Peninsula. Left for college in Nor Cal right after high school. Had no real goals or ambitions, it was just "going outside to college" was what many Alaskan kids did. I think just to go see the world(and the sun for more than two months at a time)Dropped out of college and went to work. California was O.K. for the first 5 years or so - new and exciting, pretty girls, concerts, the beach, but I was never at ease with crowds and waiting and found myself recreating more and more in the Sierras to get away. I had just about decided to head back to Alaska and work in the family biz when an opportunity came up to take a job in the Kalispell area of Montana and I trimmed my belongings down to what would fit in a pick up and hit the road with about $200 to my name. Stayed here, bought some land, built a home. Met Sandy and her two children and got domestic. And wouldn't you know it 14 years later and now THIS place is getting too crowded. So, beginning of this year I purchased a business in Darby Montana. Darby is a small no stoplight town on the southern end of the Bitterroot Valley. I've been commuting back and forth but the house here is under contract so looking like we will be full time in Darby next month.
I guess that's really the "how", but as for the why it's really about the uncrowded natural beauty of nature for me. I just recently travelled to Idaho Falls for some business and in the last several days have been over Chief Joseph pass and through the Big Hole Valley. Up thru Virginia City and the Madison Valley, then West Yellowstone, been on immediate west side of the Tetons, back up through the Bitterroot Valley and finally up in the Flathead. Along the way I passed so much stunningly beautiful scenery it's laughable. I just don't think there could be a better place to live and I honestly spent a good part of yesterday smiling and feeling incredibly lucky and blessed. As I crested a hill out of Dillon Montana and the Big Hole Valley opened up below and to the right of me on a sunny green day I said out loud "that's it...I'm dying here."
|
|
|
Post by RickW on Jun 20, 2008 12:49:48 GMT -5
Born, grew up, have always lived here in Vancouver. I'm about 45 minutes from the house I was a kid in. It's not in the family anymore - I miss that area. This is one of the most beautiful places on earth. The mountains, the oceans, the rain forest. It's too wet - but that's what makes it so green. It's rarely too hot, rarely too cold. And it's one of the most tolerant places on earth. Asians, (Chinese, Koreans, Southeast Asians, Japanese,) South Asians (Indians,) and every variety of caucasion known to man. Our neighbourhoods are mixed - not that there aren't congregations, but it's by choice. My daughter's school is a United Nations. I love this place. I think about leaving sometime, maybe to the hot, dry interior here. But then again, why? Everyone and everything I love is here. I have three Asian daughters, and they'll get a fairer shake here than pretty well anywhere else in the world. Then again, they might move away, and I might have to follow them....
|
|
|
Post by millring on Jun 20, 2008 12:54:06 GMT -5
Mm,
Sounds beautiful. You need another employee?
I came from Indianapolis to Northern Indiana -- Indiana's "Lakes Region". Stop laughing. I came north because I was recruited by Grace College to play soccer and knew (because some high school teamates preceded me) that I could also play some college basketball.
I stayed because I like the small town, the northern Indiana landscape, and have insinuated myself into the local culture.
|
|