Springfield, Illinois. I’ve always said that it has all of the disadvantages of a small town with none of the advantages, and all of the disadvantages of a big city with none of the advantages. In the winter it’s an impossibly-cold hellscape. When I was a teenager I couldn’t wait to get the fuck out of there.
Of course, Springfield was my home for 2/3 of my life, so there’s that. And when I go back there to visit family I make it a point to take advantage of the offerings of “the big city,” such as good head shops, good ethnic food, and so on.
But I’m glad to be gone from there, don’t see myself ever living there again.
I used to have fond feelings for the small, rural town of 3,000 I grew up in, but that all changed when Trumpism took over. People there have become mean. Even my family that remains there have split into hostile political factions.
I was born in a US Air Force hospital overseas at an air base that now belongs to the local military, in a city area that wasn’t even Mom’s residence, and that our family never went back to.
My “birth city” is meaningless, except that they are the home city for a national baseball team which is a rival of mine, so screw 'em.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that so many of you moved (were moved by family) at a young age, but I was.
I grew up on a farm in Western Illinois. It was a great place to be a kid. Once I got over being a kid I left (pretty eagerly, I admit) and moved around a bit and now that I’m old and my family is all either dead or moved away, I have no connection to that area at all.
Like quite a few in the thread, my folks moved when I was pretty young (5) from my place of birth (semi-rural MASS), so I have very fragmented memories, most of them good however. Since we never went back, and there was nothing in that place that attracts national attention, there wasn’t really anything to attach too other than the people.
Now, I grew up mostly in Las Cruces NM (5-17) with lots of time spent elsewhere - and I do have an irrational attachment to it. It has plenty of warts, but I have enough memories of people, places and food, combined with at least occasional visits back to keep it in my mind. But, with time, and the loss due to time of said people and places I have memories of, the attachments fade and the warts are harder to ignore.
Born and raised in California, moved away for college and never plan to go back. When I used to visit my parents who still lived in the same house in the same town, I hated it. There had been so much built and changed. I’d point at places and say what it used to be.
Not much. Born in Workington (OK, so if you’re starting off from London, drive north until you’re almost in Scotland, turn sharp left and keep going til you reach the sea). Lived there until I left home in my very early twenties.
Ended up where there was a job for me and never left the area (OK, so if you’re starting off from London, drive south…)
Workington is just a backwater - isolated, insular, a post industrial, ex-mining, ex-steelmaking town. People leave there, they don’t go there. I don’t hate it (at least, not often; but that whole Workington Man thing got to me, largely because there was enough truth in it.) We went back a few years ago for my cousin’s funeral, thinking then that it would probably be the last visit. There’s just no reason to go back any more.
Born and bred in Manhattan, I will always feel like and identify as a New Yorker. But I don’t know if I still have an “affinity” for it, insomuch as it’s not a place I aspire to live ever again. Until 2020 I worked full time in the city, but I live in Jersey now and “home” is here where my grandparents settled back in 1933. I didn’t think of this town as home until after I’d lived here myself for several years and my children were born, but it’s home now. NYC is in my blood but this small North Jersey town is in my heart.
Born and raised a few miles east of Los Angeles, in a hot, smoggy, concrete-and-palm tree suburb. The last couple of times I visited family there I felt sick from smog the whole time. I keep moving farther and farther north as the years go on. Next year this time it’ll be Oregon.
None. When I think of “home” I think of the town I lived in from when I was five until I was twelve (which is around 20-25 miles from the city where I was born).
Thanks for putting into words some of my feelings for my birthplace, London. We moved away from England when I was 5, but I do remember some of the big landmarks from the area, like Kensington Gardens, and grew up knowing that my parents had loved their time there. I’ve visited again a few times and find myself thinking, with irrational pride, “it’s a great city, and I was born here.”
Quite a bit. I work in the town I grew up in. My mother still lives in the same house I grew up in. After she’s gone and I retire I won’t feel the same.
I live in the same zip code as the one I was born in. My two sons were born in the same hospital that I was. I’ve lived in this town – or one of the small bedroom communities adjacent – for my entire life save the ~2 years I was away in college. I still live here not because I like it particularly but because I got a job here right after school and have not found a better opportunity since. My wife likes it here so… whatever. I’d much rather live in a big progressive city (Portland or Seattle) rather than a little conservative jerkwater town but here I am.
My brother now lives in the house I grew up in and my parents live next door to him. That’s a 20 minute drive from where I live now.
This summer, we got into conversation with our waiter, who was from my home state, so we asked him where, and he told us it was a place no one has heard of, BumFuckElsewhere. I informed him that I was born in BigFuckElsewhere (10 miles up the road), which was quite the treat, meeting someone from that area. Surpised both of us.
We moved out when I was 4, to the big city, where I grew up, but took several summer trips across the state to FuckElsewhere county, because it is beautiful up there, at least in the summer. My hometown is kind of a tired place, but the people there seem mostly ok. I might move there if I had a reason, but the winters might be more than I could handle.
I grew up in a small town in Bavaria until I was 20, and I have affinity towards it; my parents are still there, so I get to visit, and I also enjoy meeting high school friends who are still there (had a class reunion just a few weeks ago). My birth town for passport etc. purposes is right next to it, and I was born there only because my mother happened to be hospitalised there to give birth. I don’t have a real sense of affinity towards it and don’t know anybody there, but whenever I drive through I briefly recall the fact that this is where I was born.
I have zero affinity with the town I was born in, it was 20km from where my parents lived and I grew up, there was just no doctor there at the time so mum had to travel to give birth to me.
The town I grew up in, I love. Great affinity with it. I live in Melbourne but bought a small place up in Tocumwal where I grew up pre Covid before prices went nuts, that’s where I’m going to retire to. Stuff Sea Change, Tree change with the Murray River, that’s what I’m talking about.
I was born in San Diego when my dad was stationed there as a Marine. He was discharged and we moved back to Baltimore about 6 weeks after I was born.
When I was in the Navy, I was stationed in San Diego. It was OK - I was single and in my early 20s, had my first apartment, bought my first car, got my pilot’s license, but after I was transferred, I had no urge to return - that was in 1976. To this day, I have no compelling desire to return. It’s just another place I lived.
I was born in a small town in the south east of England. It’s a nice enough place but has little to recommend it - I have fond memories of growing up there but as I went to secondary school several miles away and was one of the only girls in my class to attend that particular school, I didn’t have any “local” friends past the age of 10.
We moved away when I was 16 and I have much more affection for the place we moved to as I built most of my adult life there until I moved on after a messy and painful divorce. The place I live now is ok, it’s not great, there’s good and bad. My partner is Scottish and, like a previous poster, if Scotland were to vote for independence, he would most likely want to move back there.
City of birth: Juneau, Alaska. We left for Anchorage when I was ten and I have no connection to the place. I was able to go back there on business about 40 years later but felt no ties.
Formative years were in Anchorage, and I’ve lived there again since then. I also still have family there. I have a lot of love for the state and I do really miss it. The beauty and scope of the place is astonishing.