Tag: Home

Fact can be stranger than fiction.

My mother seldom told fictitious stories. She stayed with the truth. And with a good memory in her favor, the stories stayed the same with retelling.

My memory does not latch onto the details as firm. I want to tweak, smooth, and improve a tale as time goes along. So pardon any errors in the following. It’s a tale told by mother a few times, although not as often as other experiences.

In the third autumn of their marriage, my father decided to go pheasant hunting on their farm. At the time they farmed 140 acres, mostly cropland, but with the rougher portions still in woods.

They must have owned two guns at the time. Dad almost always kept a .22 rifle in the house. A shotgun would have been the weapon of choice for pheasant hunting.

Every day dad went out for several hours, walking fence lines and other areas of tall grass that the birds favored. He didn’t see even one. He’d return to the buildings in time for evening chores and report his lack of luck. And mother would inform him that “the pheasant” came right up to the buildings again today.

Dad expressed his doubt.

Three or four days into this pattern, mother had had enough. When “the pheasant” showed up, long after dad had taken one gun and gone hunting, she took matters into her own hands. She fetched the second gun, loaded it, and opened the bedroom window. Supporting the rifle barrel on the sill, she waited. When the time was right she pulled the trigger.

Imagine my father’s face when he returned an hour or two later.

“I shot the pheasant. He flapped under the grainery too far for me to reach.”

Thus ended my father’s short bird hunting exploits.

Where do you live? Sleep the most often? At the end of the day, where do you call home?

For some of my relatives, friends, and acquaintances their answer is a house or apartment located near their birthplace. Perhaps down the street, or a few miles from where they grew up.

For others the current and original are separated by hundreds, perhaps thousands, of miles, national boundaries, or cultural divisions.

A few years ago I realized that I’ve lived in this current, adopted of the United States longer than in Wisconsin, where I was born and grew to early adulthood. Where has all the time gone? I got here by an indirect route, with stops of varying time in other states.

Does length of time make it home? Experiences? Intention to stay?

Selected sites (and sights) in Missouri Clockwise from the left:

Meramec Caverns near Sullivan, Powell Gardens in Kansas City, St. Louis Zoo, and Budweiser Clydesdales (iconic beer salesmen).

Everyone has one. It may be one of the fifty that make up the United States. It may be the state or province or great city of another nation. Your place of birth.

My birthplace, hometown, where I grew up seeped into my being for a little more than the first two decades of my life. Then I carried it with me to other places, regions, and experiences.

I’m able to return for visits. It’s good to see familiar places and people. To bring little reminders home to sit on the shelf or hold my morning coffee.

Identifying the mugs from the left:

Peshtigo fire of 1871 commemorated. Drive careful — all of Wisconsin is a deer crossing area. Home town celebrated their Sesquicentennial. State flag remembers miners and loggers. Cows — earned the nickname of “America’s Dairyland.”

Have you visited your roots? Does it bring good, unwelcome, or sad memories?