Im currently ~1200 miles from home to attend the funeral of my grandmother. She spent about half her life living in a town of about 180 people, 35 miles from the next nearest town big enough for a gas station and a grocery store. Life was hard and it it gave a whole new meaning to the phrase “be prepared.”
At the funeral the family was divided into, essentially, two groups: those that stayed in the rural community and those that fled for better job or… anything, really, to escape the life of a farmer / farm wife. My mom was an escapee: she went to nursing school and got a job 1200 miles away.
I, however, did not escape from where I grew up. My kids go the same school my wife did–she didn’t leave either. I work for the college I got my first undergrad degree in. Last week I had dinner with a woman I have known since we both were toddlers. Basically, I never saw a reason to leave. Grass isn’t necessarily greener over yonder.
Now I’m giving serious consideration to moving here: a rural farming community a half-hour’s drive from the nearest grocery store. Why? Because both my wife and I can likely find good employment (we’re both teachers) and 3 bed / 3 bath houses sell for $90K (they’d be 4 times that back home).
Anyway, all of this has made me curious: how far from home (that is, the place you grew up) do you live? And further, is there a good reason for you to have made the choice to stay or leave? Are there significant benefits (monetary or personal) to the decision you made?
I’ve lived in the same community for 38 years. The thought of leaving for good is both terrifying and exciting.
20 miles. And though I’ve driven through town, it’s been years since I got out of the car there. Leaving was not my choice - we moved the day after I graduated from high school to take care of my great grandmother the next state over and didn’t return when we moved back to New Hampshire.
2100 miles, the distance from Johnstown, PA to Tucson, AZ. The economy wasn’t great, Johnstown was a dying town, and my mom grew up in Tucson. Tucson is a great town, home to a major university, lots of good medical facilities, and a booming aerospace industry. Employment is good, Arizona has an $11 per hour minimum wage going up to $12 in 2020. The weather is great, if a bit hot in the summer. We’re not suffering from the extreme weather going on in the rest of the country.
540 miles. I grew up in a suburb of a reasonably sized city and now live in a college town where I college. But I am a stick in the mud. One school from K through 12 (private school in the same building even). One university from SB through PhD. Two full time jobs at two different universities for 7 and 37 years. We owned one home in each place plus one first year of renting in each place. With my parents I live in two homes, one through age 6, the other until marriage (excluding college).
2289km, according to Google’s reckoning. That’s about 1422 miles.
It’s a long way, but there’s no land between me and home, really. It’s all a sea. And aside from touring various parts of Australia, I haven’t really travelled much else. Not even been outside my hemisphere.
Not sure of the mileage, but I grew up in sorta central Northwestside Chicago, near Fullerton and Cicero. I now live on the upper border Northside of Chicago, just a smidge from Evanston where I was born.
2.2 miles from where I was born and raised. I have never lived more than about 5 miles out. I have never driven more than 5 miles to work. Retired now I will soon be moving about 80 miles away.
I currently live in NJ just over the river from Manhattan. As for the reason I left the non-descript suburban town in Connecticut where I grew up, that’s just what most people did. Unless you planned on staying in town or one of the nearby towns to be a schoolteacher, policeman, fireman or other municipal worker or local small business owner, there wasn’t a whole lot of reasons to stay. So most people graduated high school, went off to college or joined the military and move to a big city (initially Boston or New York for many) and eventually further out until they settled in some other non-descript suburban town in some other state.
