Borderline Hometown
What is your hometown? Living on the border of Wayne and Stark counties, I would point to nearby Dalton as my hometown. But truth be told, the last time I was in town was in January, I think, to pick up a carryout dinner at my parents' church.When I was a kid, my classmates at Moffitt Heights Elementary mostly called Massillon their hometown. There were a few of us stragglers on the line, and some rebels who claimed Navarre or Canal Fulton for posterity's sake as their town, but I never felt like a Massillonian. We seldom went to Massillon, usually just to Penney's, to buy shoes downtown, get our eyes checked, or maybe a rare trip to a big supermarket. That was about it.
"Going to town" meant going to Dalton, to the grocery store, hardware, bank, the newsstand that sold teen magazines and comics, and church. I knew the kids at church and they all went to Dalton schools. I was an outsider, but I didn't feel like a big-city Massillonian, either.
My maternal grandparents and an aunt and uncle lived in Wooster. We'd travel to that metropolis every week at least once, to Moreland to see Granny Muncy and in town to see Uncle Tony and Auntie Ruth. Wooster felt like a hometown should. The college was down the street from my uncle's house, and I walked down from the library to the newsstand and beyond every Wednesday in the summer when my mom took my grandma shopping. I loved Wooster. It seemed so grand and big. After reading about skyscrapers, I once asked my mom if Wooster had a 50-story building, and she laughed, and said, "I doubt that Wooster has a five-story building." When I learned there were no skyscrapers in Wooster, and Massillon had more residents, I felt betrayed. My adopted hometown big city was not a city; it was just a town.
Today when I say I'm from Dalton, people often ask me if I know so-and-so and what year did I graduate from school. I'll usually say, "no, I don't know them, and I went to Tuslaw. See, I really live in Stark County. I don't live in Dalton. It's my mailing address." They sort of give me a quizzical look and say, "oh." It seems to imply, "well, how can it be your hometown if you don't live there?"
They have a point. Driving through rural communities in Wayne and Holmes counties, I wonder how folks in remote areas feel about claiming Millersburg and Wooster as their hometowns just because a city is on the mailing address. Both are fine towns, I should point out, but when you grow up in a rural and secluded community, it feels strange claiming a point of origin that is really just a ZIP code.
I have an old college friend, now living in L.A., who is a comedian. He grew up in Jackson Township in Stark County, and yet when he's on the road, he tells folks he's from Cleveland, "because it's easier," he tells me.
Once, in Scotland, a cabbie asked where I was from, I told him "Cleveland," and he said, "ach, I know that. My brother lives in Akron. I've visited there many times." We began talking and it turns out, he'd visited my little rural nook of the world and remembered it well. It made me feel like a fake to say I was from Cleveland.
Dalton is a fine little town to claim as a hometown. The folks are generally nice and I have fond memories of pounding the pavement from church down the street to the shops and back. I hope that the current and future generations love and protect it as their hometown. Ironically, because my church is in Massillon, I've spent much more time there and have made my peace with that town as well.
In today's suburban sprawl, more folks are encroaching upon my secluded rural area, and many towns and cities along the Rust Belt are losing residents to the new suburban subdivisions with classy sounding names like "Archer's Pointe Run," or "Galway Meadows." It makes me root more for the likes of Dalton, Massillon, Rittman, Orrville, Wooster, Killbuck, Mt. Eaton and Millersburg, to name a few. In those instances, I want to stand with the townies and say, "I support your hometown. I support your city."
Because if we don't support our hometowns, wherever they are, what will we support?