Are you home for Labor Day? Everyone comes home for Labor Day. What? YOU’RE NOT COMING HOME FOR LABOR DAY???? But, but, but… the FESTIVALS!
Wait, you say. People actually travel back to their hometowns for Labor Day- of all holidays? LOL!
No, not LOL! Because, in my town they do.
This week, I was fortunate enough to write five (count ‘em!) articles for the October edition of the magazine I write for, Johnstown Magazine. Whilst pursuing this endeavor, a few thoughts surrounding my hometown really resonated in my mind and heart, and I would be remiss if I didn’t share them.
If you know me, you know I’m constantly working, writing, mentoring, developing the production company I’m a partner in AND pursuing (let’s be honest) whatever whim strikes my fancy at the moment! However! Johnstown Magazine, my hometown’s own local chronicle, is too near and dear to my heart to give up. So when my editor doled out new assignments, I was eager to get cracking on some new stories; truthfully, because I LOVE to tell positive stories about the people of my hometown, the place I love more than anywhere on earth.
Wait, this girl loves JOHNSTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA, more than anywhere on earth? LOL again! What in the not-so-fresh hell?
Yeah, I said it. Think I’m being disingenuine? Fine. Let me explain.
It begins with the fact that I feel like most of the world is so DOWN on small towns these days, on those little places we grew up in before we got too big and fancy and important to bother with home anymore. Everybody is too good for home. People are disdainful about the areas that time seems to have forgotten. They consider them uneducated, small-minded, racist, bigamist, back-woodsy. They lump every small town into that category, as if they're all exactly the same.
I’m talking about places where industry has long-since folded, shutting down those blue-collar factories, plants, mills and mines where our grandfathers worked while our grandmothers measured out flour and sugar by the tablespoon hoping there would be enough to get the family through the week and praying for the “pay after next” when the possibility of making ends meet might finally happen.
I’m talking about towns where the small businesses are closing left and right, leaving the people who’ve run them for 30 years with meager-to-no retirement and uncertainty about their futures.
You know the towns. The ones where the average age of the population seems to be about 702 years old and there isn’t a single thing to do for entertainment, even on a Saturday night. Except when people hold their wedding receptions at the town’s go-to venue for everything- the local firehall, the same spot where the church ladies come to hold Monday night Bingo and host the fish fry every, single Friday night in Lent.
The places where people still read the physical, black and white morning paper, buy the same brands of everything they’ve bought since the advent of time and basically refuse to acknowledge that they’re going to have to use the internet sooner or later. The places where you sell a car by parking it in your yard with a “For Sale” sign you made out of the back of an old pizza box or, if you’re fancy, bought at the local hardware store.
Yeah. I’m talking about regions where heroin, meth and prescription pill addictions rip our loved ones out of our lives faster than we can blink. The places where ¾ of any given graduating high school class of seniors will run from screaming and try to forget about until they have to remember it when Christmas rolls around every year. The towns where there are no jobs, no money, no opportunity. No hope.
I’m talking about places like Johnstown, Pennsylvania. My favorite place.
But you know what, everyone? It really doesn’t have to be that way.
Do you let your kids play in your big, spacious yard without you watching them like a hawk? Do you let them ride their bikes up and down the streets until the streetlights come on? Do you grow a garden outback of the house and supplement your grocery bill with it?
And, hey, where do you buy those groceries? From a giant supermarket chain or megastore? Or, these days, from the internet to be delivered because we’re all too busy now to even stop off at the grocery store after work?
Hey, do you eat out more than one meal a week? Who doesn’t now? So, do you hit up a local favorite pizza place or Italian spot or BBQ joint or burger stop? Or do you just drive through a McDonalds or park it at a Chili’s or an Olive Garden and consider it a night out?
Guys, humor me, here.
WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF WE ALL JUST WENT HOME?
Not just for the holiday, for the weekend, for our cousin’s wedding, for a funeral. What if we went home and stayed there? What if we (the Gen-Xers, and my group, the Generation Y crowd, hey, even the Millennials that people ruthlessly make fun of) all decided to make our hometowns our forever homes? What if we still decided to chase all the dreams we have- but do it at home, where the people are often trustworthy and hard-working and the economy needs us?
(Side Note: Hold on, I gotta get real here for a second. Whether you’re a Baby Boomer, a Gen-X-er or a Gen-Y-er, let me remind you of something. A wise woman named Whitney Houston –LOL!- once said “I believe that children are our future,” and, um, yeah, that’s true. If there is any hope whatsoever to undo the complete implosion of the small towns that the mass exodus we X-ers/Y-ers caused, it’s in the hands of Millenials. For real, you should quit calling them Snowflakes if you want to have a job in a small town in 15 years- I am not even kidding. The world runs on technology and these kids are just better at it than we are. Admit it and embrace it. We need them. Otherwise, you better take the time to learn cutting-edge tech for yourself and beat them to the punch. There’s no other way.)
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming…
Listen, it might sound like I’m encouraging you to “Make America Great Again.” Before half of you stop reading, that’s not what I’m saying, okay? I don't blog about politics, I'm about as straight-down-the-middle as a person can be. But lets look at that slogan. There is a nostalgia implicit in the PHRASE itself. In fact, go ahead and ATTEMPT to deny that that slogan is not pure genius, ‘cause it is. Oh, it is. HOLD ON!!! Do not click away yet! I'm a words person, remember?
That little gem evokes an incredible sense of nostalgia in lots of people. We are all very, very nostalgic about many of the past moments of our lives. Hindsight may be 20/20, but we also often view it through rose-colored glasses. If there was EVER a time in your life when things were better than they are now, you had at least a moment where you thought: Hmm, those WERE the good old days! Simpler times. And you miss them, and you want them back. And part of you wanted to "make America great again"- or make yourself great again- even just for a minute. (Unless, of course, you weren’t aware of anything that happened in the world before, oh, 2008 or so because you had been a child with no past or treasured memories to compare "now" to, in which case you thought it was a stupid, thoughtless slogan. Sigh. But again, lets not hate on young people just because they’re young though, ok?) But truthfully, when people say “Oh yeah? When WAS America great?” Well, I think the subconscious answer that swayed the election was: whenever YOUR life was happiest. And the older the voters were, the less likely that answer was to be “Now.” So boom. Here we are. You know?
If you’re still reading, thanks. But do you see what I mean? We’re all so adamant about getting up and out, “Moving on up to the East Side” and finally getting our piece of the piiiiieeeeee and such. How could we possibly reach our full potential at home? Obviously moving to a city is the answer, going to a major university is the answer, working for a mega corporation is the answer. Maybe it is. But what would happen if you came home? Plugged some of that money back into the local economy? Lent your talents to endeavors that support regional growth?
When I lived 500 miles away from home, I hated holidays. We had to drive nine hours to get here and then drive to this house and that house and someone else’s house and lunch with those friends and dinner with that family. It was rushed and unfulfilling and annoying and when it was over I was both relieved and exhausted. Once I finally came home I made a pact with myself. No more putting the greatest, most treasured parts of my life on the back burner while I ran around and tried to be important somewhere "better." That was me turning my nose up at my family, my friends, my neighbors, my traditions, my heritage and my home. No. I will never move away again. NEVER. I embrace it all. And it is my intention to perpetuate it.
I live about 60 minutes from the building I grew up in. And that’s pretty much as far away as I plan on getting. Did I give up? Pack it up and pack it in? No, in fact. I just love my home. If your family is scattered to the wind, maybe you get to pick where "home" is for you, but if your family is gathered somewhere and you left, I'm saying that there is no more welcoming place on earth than the one you came from. (I'll spare you the Wizard of Oz memes.)
I want to be able to take my mom shopping and see my nephews whenever I want and eat the food my grandmas used to make and pop into my 83 year-old grandfather’s house on a Sunday afternoon. Family is everything. And you know, I’m not too cool for firehall weddings and church lady bingo and the around-Labor Day bonanza extravaganza that Johnstown hosts every year.
OMG! There’s the Forest Hills Festival (which, I might add, was THE who’s who spot for all of my middle/high school days. Who got super hot over the summer? Who snagged the newest Airwalks and the cutest flannel? Who fell on their face during our dance company’s ballet performance?) there’s Folk Fest and Ethnic Fest (FIND better food in the state, I DARE you.) and the Cambria County Fair. Potato Fest in Ebensburg? Yes! I want that! And, yo, stop at Morris’ Tavern real quick because every Jtown class reunion in life will be occurring in one room or another! Anyway…
What’s my point? Well, if you’re far from home and happy, maybe try to make wherever you are a place your kids will want to stay. If you’re near home, I invite you to do what I’m trying to do: decide how we can take a place we’re nostalgic about, a place where our memories are kept and our lives unfolded and make it a place where our children will have the opportunity to enjoy. I worry sometimes that there will be no Johnstown by the time my kids are old enough to decide if they want to live there or not. We’ve got to support local business, remember the area and the people who turned us into the kind, caring, helpful, thoughtful people we are today and create more of that as we move into the future.
Guys, let’s think about going home- for good. Let’s bring opportunity there. Jobs, entertainment, culture. I am so sure that it can be done. We all needed to go sow our wild oats and experience the world when we were young. We did that, and if we’re going to be honest with ourselves, none of those places ever really felt “right.” Now let’s bring our experience and talents and fresh ideas back home and invest in the people and the place that invested in us. Let’s change the world. Let’s start at home. -Kelly
