Grew up in Anchorage, left for 30 years, moved back for 11 years, then left again four years ago. I miss now what I missed for those 30 years: seeing the Chugach Mountains when I stepped out my front door. This is Anchorage with the mountains in the background.
During my most cherished time growing up, we lived out of town in western Oregon. We were 54 miles from the Pacific Ocean.
I miss the ocean, its beaches, seafood, and forests of REAL trees! Not the little 60’ ones we have here in Colorado. If you can wrap your arms around it it is not a tree … a seedling maybe, but not a tree. If you can put more then five logs on a log truck, it is too small, let it grow!
I also miss the miles and miles of tree lined country roads. While we have miles and miles of country roads here, they do not have many trees. What we do have is miles and miles of desert. While I do like the desert, I truly miss real trees. Oh and rivers, not little creeks like the Colorado River that one can wade across easily (in late summer). Rivers that are 1/4 mile across or bigger.
I also miss some of my relatives. Some of them I miss terribly, others, not so much. My oldest uncle on my dads side passed away this year. He was a big factor in my young life. My dad passed two years ago, I really miss my uncle and his wife!
I do not miss the months of rain, nor the “Ghetto” part of Portland that I lived in for a year or two. Mosquitoes are another not missed feature of that part of Oregon.
Do not get me wrong, I like it here! I enjoy the “hills” east of me. The back roads around here are fun to travel and lead to many interesting sites. The creeks and streams are fun to fish and wade in. Although they tend to be cold! I love hiking in the alpine “forests” in the “hills”. I love many of the parks here in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Arizona. The stars are astounding at night! I like the “empty country” that surrounds me.
Moved from rural Michigan, now in southern California:
Basements
Houses with large yards and no fences between
Thunderstorms
Change of seasons
The night sky
Their version of hoagie/sub sandwiches
The greenery
Now, granted, I could move back and all of that would still be there…but so would other stuff…just, y’know, OTHER STUFF.
Thanks. I couldn’t tell. When I figured out how many times it would have been I was a little surprised. Hence the defensive footnote.
I grew up in Illinois. I miss pork tenderloin sandwiches. Crispy, juicy, just a touch of cornmeal in the batter, a few dill pickles, the meat about 2 inches bigger than the bun in all directions! I have no idea why other places outside the midwest don’t do these. There’s a place down in South Texas (near Mercedes) that serves them at lunch and it’s so crowded every day with midwestern exiles scarfing them up that you have to wait an hour for a table! Seems like these would catch on in other places but after years in Georgia, Los Angeles, and now Austin, no pork tenderloins.
Grew up in Southern Illinois. The thing I miss most are tomatoes right out of the garden. What a flavor!
Can’t really grow decent tomatoes out here in the Great Pacific Northwest, and the supermarket ones can be best described as an “orangish spheroidal food product”.
At least they’ve finally got decent corn-on-the-cob in the stores.
Queens.
Really good bagels, really good rye bread, really good appetizing, like whitefish as well as lox, and especially being able to get the Sunday New York Times on Saturday night.
I was born in a Western state, but we moved when I was two, so I don’t remember anything about that. I was raised in West Texas, and I don’t miss a single goddamned thing.
Inspired by Daylate, I’m going to add:
Corn on the cob (what they have in our stores - it’s just not the same)
Garden grown tomatoes
I still live in the same town where I was raised, bt it is not the same place. It’s grown up now, and different. I stayed, but the place I grew up left me. Some things I miss:
-Kids could roam all day in the summer, going miles from home, coming home only for lunch and supper, and no one worried about anyone being abducted
-The soda fountain in the granite walled drug store. Ever had a real cherry Coke? That’s cherry syrup squirted in a cup of fountain Coke. As kids we preferred a slightly different version, chocolate Coke - chocolate syrup in a fountain Coke - caffiene, caffiene, caffiene and sugar. We swore we could get drunk on them, but really what we got was a queasy stomache.
-Every male child carried a pocket knife pretty much everywhere, including school, and no one considered it any more scary than a pencil - just another tool. We had fights on the playground nearly every day, but no one ever considered reaching in their pocket for the knife.
-Every home that I knew of contained firearms, yet from childhood through high school I only knew of 2 people who were killed by one, both were suicide.
It wasn’t quite Mayberry, but it was close.
- We did play mumbley-peg with our pocket knives.
- Yeah, (I don’t often bring it up because people think about it differently today, but) we brought guns to school. Because we had hunter safety training and target practice after school…
The only thing I miss about not living in Worcester MA is 24 hour pharmacies and/or grocery stores. But, that’s not specific to Worcester. I had that in Chicopee MA and in Plattsburgh NY as well.
Southbridge doesn’t have any pharmacies open later than 9pm and the latest grocery store is in the next town over and closes at 10pm. Waking up at 3am with heartburn and a big empty spot where the antacids should be is a nightmare.
Raised in Texas…
It’s easier to list what I don’t miss: heat, humidity, hurricanes, droughts, floods, tornadoes, poisonous snakes, cockroaches, scorpions, fire ants, giant spiders…:eek:
I do miss the great spirit, friendliness and humor of the people, especially that unique brand of Southern humor. And biscuits with gravy.
Still live in the same neighborhood but I miss the thousands of acres of open fields I used to play in. All built up now.
Chicago, moved to California 27 years ago. Mostly I miss food things:
- Pizza. What they have here is godawful. They put orange cheese on pizza here.
- Gyros. Hell, anything Greek.
- Also anything German.
- A decent, all beef hot dog with everything. Also Italian Beef sandwiches.
Don’t miss: anything else about Chicago. The list of stuff I don’t miss is legion, and starts with the weather.
ETA: okay, I miss family, but I knew I would before I left. I didn’t know food was so dire though. No decent pizza?!?
While I wasn’t raised in Texas, I lived there for years. I miss hearing a Texan woman launch into a completely scathing takedown of someone else’s faults and flaws, then cap it off with a sweet smile and a “…bless [his/her] heart.” 
I don’t miss being asked where I go to church within the first three minutes of meeting someone new. :dubious:
South Jersey here also. I forgot about jughandles. They weren’t perfect, but it’s better than what most places do (nothing. everyone in every direction stops at every intersection). I moved to Michigan and had to get used to the Michigan Left. Still better than doing nothing.
I miss the food. South Jersey had influences from New York and Philly, so you could get great pizza, hoagies, Italian, seafood, …basically everything. SJ also had it’s own drink called Tak-a-Boost. It tasted a bit like flat Pepsi with a shit ton of caffeine.
You know, I expected this when I moved to Texas but it has happened to me exactly once in three years, and it wasn’t within the first three minutes but much later in the acquaintenance. Maybe Austin really isn’t Texas, which is what I suspect. Or maybe it’s because everyone knows I’m from California and everyone knows Californians are godless.
Austin really isn’t Texas. I love Austin, but it is very much the outlier among large cities in in Texas.
I don’t remember people asking me this either, and I lived there a long time and in many different cities and towns. I did hear a lot of Baptist prayers at different meetings, luncheons and organizational events.
Austin is most definitely Texas. Shame on you!