If you moved away, did you visit your old home town?

I've been back many times. Everything just keeps getting smaller and older....... (Sort of like me....)

There was a large rock at the end of the street that we used to stand on top of. It was huuuuuge. Really huuuge. It's still there........except that apparently someone has chiseled it down, y'know? Because it's, at the most, two feet tall. Oh, well, another childhood memory blasted all to hell.

The large house we moved into when I was 10? It isn't....large.

The really, really high hill we sledded down? Barely a ramp.

The tall buildings downtown? That you had to take the elevators to get up to the top floor? The Burj Khalifa they weren't.

As Thomas Wolfe said, "You can't go home again"......at least not the home you "remember".
 
I recently went on Zillow and looked up my childhood home. The boxwood hedge around the front yard was replaced by wrought iron fencing. The windows had also had red awnings added
I was raised in NYC in the Bronx and left as soon as I graduated and never looked back, Some years my wife and I spent a few days in NY prior to a trip, and played tourist. It was a lot of fun, and I did things I had not done growing up, such as a carriage ride through Central Park.
 

My early childhood in Toronto, never been back. It just wasn’t convenient to drive out of our way to get there. The next home, that my mother was in for 40 years, I’ve never been back since she passed away. The city I last lived in for 30+ years, I went back once after the first year. It wasn’t home anymore. My DD went back last year after a ten year absence and was devastated by how run down things were.
 
My home "town" of about 200 folks has largely disappeared because of the construction of a large plant in the 70s. But they do still have a post office, so there is that....

And yes I have visited many times, but may not be able to do it again,, since I'm 900 miles away.
 
One old neighbourhood in Vancouver is completely gone. Another looks the same, though the house has been replaced. The third looks somewhat the same, with different siding. Stanley Park looks completely different, driving through .. but then again, I left in 1967.
 
Yes..I moved countries..albeit within the UK... and I;ve been back twice since I left at 19... and aside from the roads being much busier with traffic, and traffic lights where there wasn't any before.. everything looks exactly the same...

ETA I just realised I've been back 3 times not 2....in almost 50 years...
 
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In all the years away from home...32...I only ever went to visit once, and that was about two years after moving away so that my family could "meet" my toddlers. At the time, there were just the two boys.

The next time I went back was when DH and I moved back there in 1992. We stayed for 16 years before leaving again. We couldn't handle the cold and brutal winters any longer. Went back for about a week after DH died for his funeral. I doubt that I'll get back again.

The only person I really would like to see again in my youngest brother, but that probably won't happen.
 
Being near the end of the NYC commuter line my hometown always had a nice mix of sophistication and rural. Now the old homestead has been upgraded and manicured to be almost unrecognizable. My sister still lived nearby and arranged a tour of the house the last time I visited. My dad's old workshop in the cellar is now a sterile workout space. The radiators are gone and in floor heating installed. My dad and grandpa built that house in 1927 and I'm glad someone is taking such good care of it.
 
Twenty-two years ago was the last time I visited by childhood town, in the country, up north... It was totally different from my memories. Of course.

The house that I last lived in has been gone for years, for a shopping center district.
Only thing there to visit was the town cemetary, where my mother and several of her siblings are buried.
 
Yes. It’s all built up. There are no more farm fields behind our old house. It’s now a new subdivision with stores and new schools. I never went back after seeing that. I like the memory of the cows out back. Whenever I’d play in the backyard, cows would often come over to check out what I was doing. I like cows. If we are going to use cows for food, why not have happy cows. Higher frequency foods = better quality = better heath.
 
I have been back to the house I grew up in. It made me feel very sad to see the rundown condition it's in. They have painted it black and built another house in the back garden. I'm sorry I went back and had a good cry when I got home. Even with the last house, after my husband died I went back to have another look. All the trees were gone, another house had been added to the back yard. Sometimes it's better to hold on to your beautiful memories as nothing can replace the memories.
 
I've been back a few times. As jujube said, everything got a lot smaller. There is the slide in my grammar school play ground. I was afraid to use it, it was so big and tall. Well, it shrunk down to about 6 ft high. The downtown area was pretty much demolished. Most of the stores were a hundred years old, when I was a kid. Now, there are the big box stores. A lot of the small mom & pop stores are gone-a fruit store, cobbler shop. etc.
 
fuzzybuddy said:
I've been back a few times. As jujube said, everything got a lot smaller. There is the slide in my grammar school play ground. I was afraid to use it, it was so big and tall. Well, it shrunk down to about 6 ft high. The downtown area was pretty much demolished. Most of the stores were a hundred years old, when I was a kid. Now, there are the big box stores. A lot of the small mom & pop stores are gone-a fruit store, cobbler shop. etc.
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The town is still there but my old home is gone. It was a farm. There's a subdivision there now. I can't even figure out exactly where the house was.
 
DaveA said:
And you know the funny thing about homes and businesses, in your hometown disappearing - - -the exact same thing happens when you continue to live there, but it happens in small increments and you don't notice it as much.
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You're right. I lived here for 30 years. One of the little games I play when I'm driving is what wasn't here when I moved here. As I drive, it's "nope, that wasn't there"., "Nope, that bank wasn't there" etc. So much has changed. 30 years ago, you couldn't buy gas after 10 PM, now there are a half dozen 24 hr. gas stations.
 
hollydolly said:
The nice thing is now, that we can all look at our old homes on Google street view... we don't have to go back...
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You know, because I never moved, it never occurred to me and yet I do go to Google Maps occasionally to look at vacation places that I was familiar with over the years.
 

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