As boomers cruise into the twilight, we find ourselves longing for the place where we grew up and came of age. Some of us never left “back home” while others of us have moved far and wide. I am an East Coast boy who grew up in the Washington, D.C. area in Maryland and Virginia. I was born in Northwest D.C., which makes me a native Washingtonian. My family history in Washington goes back generations to an organization known as “The Oldest Inhabitants of the District.”
I’ve called Arlington and Fairfax counties in Virginia home as well as Prince George’s and Wicomico counties in Maryland. I’ve lived in Los Angeles for over 30 years – yet Southern California has never really been home for me. It is just too different for me. You can take the East Coast boy out of the East Coast yet you will never take the East Coast out of the boy.
I never observed anything normal about Los Angeles much less the California surrounding it. This isn’t a criticism, but more an observation. It is very different from my native mid-Atlantic. If you desire a perfect climate and incredible destinations within driving distance, then California is the place to be.
I have lived all over these United States – Florida, Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee, and Michigan in an effort to land in a more permanent spot to call home. I suppose I found that “spot” in suburban Los Angeles on the high desert some 60 miles north of this vast metropolis. Los Angeles was never really in the plan because my most favorite place in the world is the American heartland. Career brought me to Big L.A. in the early 1990s and I never left. Los Angeles is something of a “Hotel California” where you can check in, but you can never leave. Los Angeles is a huge vacuum that sucks you in and the next thing you know, you’ve been here for three decades.
Maybe your story is similar to my own. I live a continent away from where I grew up. I’ve spoken with those of you who’ve moved a half a world away in places like Australia and New Zealand, or Brazil, South Africa, or Europe. I have a friend who moved to France right after high school and never returned. He loves it there.
My classmates are all over the globe.
It is true you can never go home again because “home” is just never the same. I have returned to the D.C. area dozens of times in the past 45 years. Landing at Baltimore’s BWI Airport is like seeing an old friend again whenever the wheels grease the runway. About 26 miles south of BWI is my hometown of Bowie, Maryland at the juncture of U.S. Route 50 and Maryland’s Route 3/301.
Every time I’ve come home to Maryland, it is so very familiar, and yet so different from what it was growing up in the 1960s. What was once very rural meadowland is developed and populated. My old haunts are either gone or so very different from what they were a half century ago. A good rule to follow is when you suffer from wanderlust to back to where you came from, take heart in knowing it won’t be the same and adapt to what it is now. Next thing you know, it will be like you never left.
Boomer Journey... 
I am also a Washingtonian, born in Georgetown, raised in DC and suburban Maryland, now residing in Florida. When someone says “home,” my mind automatically returns to Bowie. While I only spent my high school days there, it still holds my heart as my home.
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Hi Wendy – aren’t many of us native to Washington. I was born in Northwest – Columbia Hospital for Women – in 1956.
Yeah – Laurel, Bowie, Lanham, College Park, Hyattsville…
So good to hear from you.
=)
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I went back to New York, Long Island, East Meadow, where I came from. Was saddened to find out the house burnt down, but they built a new one on top of the old foundation with all the same sidewalks, and the front walk hit all the sidewalks for the same. Talking with the inherited owner, he mentioned some of the people that have been around since the 1960s and my older sister recognized a lot of the names I wanted to go back and just hang around the neighborhood, ride a bicycle I remember my parents putting me in the back of their bicycle and riding me around the block .
But now I think the house has been sold again. The aerial picture is looking down from Google shows a whole different sidewalk pattern around the house. Somebody bought it and fenced in the whole backyard, and redid the walkways that were original from the 1960s when I grew up there.
The city was more familiar, seeing the apartment my grandfather raised my dad in was awesome. I remember visiting there with my brother and I looking out from the third story window and all the taxi cabs on the street on Northern Boulevard in Jackson Heights. I have a lot of old photographs with my dad after the war hanging out in the neighborhood. And, I tried to go back to the places he was standing, but new buildings were there in many of the photo memories I have. I still want to go back, but if I do, I’ll be going alone because my sister has no interest. Maybe one of these days we’ll see a selfie of me at the corner of the house I was raised in from day one. I have a black-and-white picture of my mom holding me my first day at that house in Long Island, East Meadow.
Eric Hasert
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Hey Eric – we go back a long way. The first home I ever rented as an adult in Oklahoma was torn down. Not sure why – but it felt strange to see a vacant lot. Your home on Long Island….that had to have felt decidedly strange – and sad. Change like this is hard to accept. The Bowie, Maryland Cape Cod I grew up in after Steward Manor fell into disrepair for years after we left. A single women bought the house and made it a lovely place to live in again. I guess she married and the house took on solar panels, security cameras and such and doesn’t look as nice as it once did.
Oh well – when we leave a place – it’s never going to be the same, Eric.
My family has been all around Washington, D.C. for generations. Arlington, Fairfax, Falls Church, Lanham, Laurel, College Park, Hyattsville, and Bowie/Crofton. You and I share Steward Manor memories in Laurel. Always good to hear from you friend.
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