Where’re You From?
I’ve been asked that question my whole life—never quite sure why. Maybe it's my accent, or maybe I'm just weird enough that people feel like they need to place me somewhere to make sense of me.
My answer’s usually the same. “Go south about an hour. If you hit this place, you’re close. Go a bit further, but if you get to that place, you’ve gone too far.”
Lately, I’ve started thinking that “Where are you from?” isn’t just about geography. It’s about a time and a way of life.
Where I’m from, you knew it was 7:00 AM, 3:00 PM, and 11:00PM because the steel mill whistles blew for shift changes. With the bedroom window open, you could hear the deep rumble of diesel locomotives gearing up to haul steel to places we’d never been.
Downtown was one main street with three stoplights, lined with stores owned by people we’d known all our lives.
We went to school in a single building—7th grade through Senior year. Most of our teachers had once sat at our desks. They were our aunts, our uncles, our neighbors. For me, one of them was my big sister.
High school football? That was everything. Season tickets passed down like family heirlooms. Every Friday night, the whole town gathered to follow the marching band through the streets, fight songs echoing, voices lifted, all the way to the stadium.
We thought that was how everybody did it.
We were second-hand owners of the first muscle cars. They were loud, smelly, greasy and glorious. We spent as much time under the hood as we did behind the wheel. Rear ends jacked up on air shocks, glass pack mufflers roaring, manual transmissions and leaded gas. Weekends were for waxing them to a shine so sharp it reflected streetlights like diamonds—anything to catch a girl's eye.
The girls wore hip-huggers with bell bottoms so wide they swallowed their wooden clogs, the cuffs on the back of their pant legs worn into tattered half-moons. They had long hair and round glasses, smelled like lemons, and traveled in packs—always headed somewhere we weren’t allowed to follow.
After high school, most of us got a union card and a lunch bucket—just like our dads. Same mill, same rhythm. We got married young, swapped the hot rod for a station wagon, and started the cycle over.
It was steady, predictable and peaceful. And no matter where I go, no matter where I live, that place will always be home.
So yeah—head south about an hour, you can’t miss it.
But I do.
