Comments in my previous thread, "What's the Earliest News Event You Remember?" inspired this thread. It is my hope that whatever you share captures what it was like to grow up in your hometown.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/101743839570/permalink/10155590424799571/

Most of the pictures were taken before I was born; many of those buildings are still up as of 2014. I've never been inside the Bronco Bowl; I heard so many good stories that it's almost as if I was there.

Jeanette Isabelle

Insert generic photo of US Army housing here. Location: between Schofield Barracks, Oahu and Warner Kaserne, Munich.
Someone--can't remember who--said that military children have three hometowns: their place of birth, their mother's hometown, and their father's hometown. I would opine that they also latch onto another place along the way. So, in no particular order: Ft. Lauderdale,FL, Kent, CT, Jeff' City, MO, and Marietta, OH.

THE most indelible image from my childhood, is of our group of neighborhood kids standing at attention, at the edge of the parade ground, as the band practiced the national anthem, or as a group of soldiers marched by with Old Glory. That happened at every post, at every age, in every kind of weather.

I don't have any pictures of my home town. Left when I got the chance 25 years ago and never looked back.

It's unfortunate that you did not have a place in your childhood to build positive memories. I can't imagine what that's like to live in that situation.

Jeanette Isabelle

Although I wasn't born in this town, it is where I grew up. My house was in the upper left of this picture. The road-cut cliffs in the lower left ... we used to rappel down those things before the bridge was built (pretty crumbly rock - helmets mandatory!)

Growing up, I lived in a succession of towns in Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Michigan, Mississippi, and Texas (Big "D"). I realized I had found my hometown at last when I arrived in Tucson, AZ for college. I have lived in southern California for more than thirty years, but I am still an Arizonan at heart.

I visited Phinex, AZ once as a teenager. It's a beautiful place and pleasant.

Jeanette Isabelle

It was a fine place to be a child but a poor place to be a man.

Given that I don't know what it is like to be a man, I can't process that information.

Jeanette Isabelle

Haha! That's a perfectly good response! To put it another way I suppose I chafed greatly at small town life. Plus I don't own a cowboy hat so I had to buy one or leave town.

Even though I am a man I have a hard time understanding what Phaedrus means by that place being a poor place to be a man.

It's nothing mysterious. I was always a bit of an oddball in my one-horse town. Very conservative, mostly farmers. I never really fit in there. When I moved to a town 250X bigger I kind of came into my own, socially and eventually professionally.

Though Ocala, FL is larger than the town you described, I know what you mean by "fitting in."

Fortunately, Ocala is growing. I wish the bus would be extended to this area and put in sidewalks.

Jeanette Isabelle