I wrote this paper for my graduate class "Domestic Architecture and American Culture." It involved two sets of surveys--one sent to my six siblings and one sent to friends--and an interview with my parents. I would like to thank everyone who participated. I would especially like to thank my siblings who are not, by any stretch of the imagination, survey/questionnaire kinds of people. Thank you all again!
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The 1995 show Star Trek: Voyager places a starship in the Delta Quadrant, 75 years from its home planet, Earth. Four years into the crew's journey home, the ship is able to contact Earth. The contact generates excitement throughout the crew—with exceptions. To the Captain's query, a female crewmember replies, "[Returning] has no emotional resonance for me . . . I've never even been to Earth." The Captain mentions the possibility of waiting family members. The crewmember is disconcerted. "It might have more emotional resonance after all," the Captain tells her.
In a later scene, a male crewmember also expresses reservations about "going home." On Earth, he was something of a black sheep: he dropped out of the Academy, entered a dangerous radical group, and ended up in jail. He also, most importantly, had a poor relationship with his father. "What I have here is so much better than anything I had there," he tells his lover. For the first crewmember, who grew up on a small starship before joining the Voyager crew, "home" involves memory: where you are, where you've been. The possibility of a literal connection—through blood—to an unknown place confuses her precise definitions. The second crewmember, on the other hand, associates home with experience: home is where his best relationships have occurred.
These incidents, drawn from one episode, illustrate the juggling perception of home that is at work in our contemporary culture. As we turn from Star Trek to its audience, we can trace the same adjustments of "home" and "place" within the products of the suburban baby boomer generation. As the central case study to this paper, I will be using the experiences of myself and my six siblings (born 1956 to 1971) in a ranch-style suburban house in upstate New York.
The notions of "home" and "place" are fundamental aspects of the human psyche. "Home," for the purposes of this paper, refers to the feelings of attachment and security that surround a particular location--our memories, our love for others--while "place" refers to a specific location or house. For contemporary suburban products, what is home is juggled amongst many environments, adjusted and graded to fit various living areas (most "home-like," least "home-like"). The idea of "home" becomes more and more abstracted. This is a coping mechanism, a way of dealing with the modern/suburban expectations of attachment (necessary for stability) followed by, at the appropriate juncture, severance (necessary for growth and independence). "Home" (the feeling) becomes a usable, portable security. Yet the specter of "home" as a specific location is also at work in today's culture. The abstract sentiment must rework itself in terms of place. Within this sometimes tense juggling process lies the suburban child's experience of the late twentieth century (these are now adults in their thirties and forties [forties and fifties now]).
Historically, "home" in America was linked to a specific place. The philosophies surrounding the Colonial Revival promoted the concept of a single family house in which feelings of belonging, and stability could be centered. In 1889, Charles Eliot Norton wrote, "Attachment to the native soil, affection for the home of one's youth, the claims of kindred, the bonds of social duty, have not proved strong enough to resist the allurements of hope, the fair promise of bettering fortune." For Norton, affection, claims, bonds are inseparable from "native soil" and "the home of one's youth"; they cannot be detached and taken elsewhere, or, at least, not easily. (See Note 1.)
Catherine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe also promoted the link between home-like sensations and a specific family residence. By creating a Christian, well-ventilated, well-decorated house, the housekeeper (wife/mother) would create a happy, efficient family life. Even Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who wished to move women out of such domestic roles, linked comfort to the house. However, Gilman displayed a modern attitude in her willingness to abstract the household. "What is, in truth, required to make a home?" she asks in her book The Home: Its Work and Influence. "First, mother and child, then father; this is the family, and the place where they live is the home." After all, as my brother Eugene wrote on his house survey, quoting Buckaroo Banzai, "Wherever you go, there you are."
The connection between stable home and sense of place was a much rarer ideal historically in America than, perhaps, even Gilman would have liked to admit. My ancestors uprooted themselves from England and journeyed west to Utah. Once there, they moved many times at Brigham Young's direction, from Salt Lake City to St. George, from Salt Lake to Orderville, to Provo. This may account for my family's almost aggressive unsentimentality regarding their places of residence. But other, less mobile families, also experienced the dissonance of new countries, states and residences. Yet the desire to link a specific location with "home-like" feelings pervades the history of the American house. The creation of suburbia reveals that desire at full force, illustrated in the classic movie It's a Wonderful Life.
The hero of It's a Wonderful Life (1946),George Bailey (played by Everyman actor Jimmy Stewart), promotes Bailey Park, a suburb of ranch houses. George Bailey runs the Bailey Building & Loan; he operates in opposition to the (corporate) bank, run by the greedy Mr. Potter. As Potter's accountant informs him, the Bailey Park houses "are 90% owned by suckers who used to pay rent to you." When George wishes himself out of existence, Mr. Potter takes over the town. The ice cream shop and other stores on Main Street are replaced by pawnbrokers, dance clubs, brothels and flashing neon signs--all the worst aspects of capitalism. The people themselves are bad-tempered and depressed. Their marriages are either broken or have never occurred. In a thundering piece of symbolism, Bailey Park has been replaced by a graveyard. "Where are the houses?" George gasps to which his angel replies, "You weren't here to build them." The inference is clear: suburban homes (not just houses) will save individuals and their families and through the families, their neighbors; suburbia will help create a self-sacrificing town where people care for one another like family.
In the suburban context, the house itself should also be a place of stability, safety. This image of a protected sanctuary pervades the nineteenth and twentieth century concept of the single family residence and appears in the early literature about suburbia. In his book The American Family Home 1800-1960, Clifford Clark summarizes architect Joseph Hudnut, (writing for the Architectural Record in 1945) when Clark writes, "[T]he family home . . . ought to be a refuge against modern society." The ideal suburbia builds houses where family togetherness can take place and children will thrive. Writing in 1977, David Popenoe compares a suburban community in Sweden with that of Levittown: both were "designed with the child in mind." He cites safety, limited traffic, nearby schools and same age companions as examples. The Swedish suburbia has more public spaces, including playgrounds but these too are "safe" and provide a variety of social interactions for the child.
It is important to note that although an ideal, the suburban environment often did live up to its promises of stability and neighborhood togetherness. A suburban product myself, I had a remarkably happy childhood. In the survey I took of my siblings, most commented positively on the environment of our suburb: the neighbors, the nearby church, and friends. As both Clark and John Archer (Architecture and Suburbia) inform us, the suburb did not always cause the problems prophesied by sociologists--conformity on the outside did not always denote conformity on the inside. Neither did the suburb automatically entail—despite movies like American Beauty and Edward Scissorhands—angst over appearance and what the neighbors might think.
The tension of the suburban experience is more subtle. The environment is designed, ideally, for children: a stable place in which children can flourish physically and emotionally. "Place" and "home" are successfully linked. Yet, the psychology and economic culture behind the suburban experience demands that the child depart that place, transfer his feelings of home elsewhere. This conundrum is evident in modern parenting manuals, in the phenomenon of the "boomerang generation" and in the surveys I collected; the answer to the conundrum can also be found in the surveys' responses: as people mature, a new changing definition of "home" is inevitable.
Parenting manuals from Stowe to modern mentors emphasize the child as product. In her book, Raising America, Ann Hulbert illustrates the transition of parenting advice from management experts (ministers and ministers' daughters) in the nineteenth century to scientists, including home economists, in the twentieth century. Over time, parenting advice became progressively more intrusive, absolute and specific. At the same time, the scientists/economists recognized that their knowledge often discouraged rather than bolstered parents, who were concerned that the slightest mistake would send their child awry. Dr. Spock stepped into the breach, reassuring parents that their love, their instincts were enough.
Nowadays, scientists, ministers, and parent advocates all vie for attention. "Amid the clamor to build better brains," Hulbert writes, "the call has also gone out to shore up children's characters" while other mentors are concerned that parents are overworked, overburdened and pressured. Despite their differences, parenting advisors still emphasize results over process. Children are described as products of genetic inheritance, neglect, cognitive input, other siblings, the parent-child relationship, moral teachings, poor discipline, too much religion, or lack of religion. The list continually grows.
Amongst all this confusion, the family house has remained a symbol of safety a place which shores up the child's confidence and prepares the child for future hardships. Any abuse is terrible but abuse inside the home (or the daycare, that home away from home) carries more than usual abhorrence. A current television show Close to Home explores dangerous and hidden secrets that occur right next door to the heroine lawyer. The horror of crimes committed within one's neighborhood heightens the show's drama. Place and behavior are linked. This should not happen here.
For here, no matter how abstract the parenting advice, must be addressed. Parenting manuals often suggest the use of house rules—the function of place—to create feelings of home for the child. Rules, or chores, will not only attach the child to the house but will also, paradoxically, prepare the child for detachment. This will solve the problem of the "boomerang generation," young adult children who return home to stay. A 2005 Dr. Phil episode addressed this supposedly recent phenomenon with the commercial hook, "In transition or moochers in training?" His three guests (a brother and two sisters, ages 30, 24 and 21) argued that their unconditionally loving parents made it easy for them to return home again and again. They are also more comfortable in their parent's house since their emotional and social needs are met there. Dr. Phil argued that the adult children were draining their parents' resources as well as taking advantage of their generosity.
In the end, the "moochers" were offered free rent at a large apartment complex (away from the parents) for a month. The month would serve as a transition period for the adult children to find their own places and new sources of income. It was not fair, Dr. Phil determined, to simply kick the moochers out, since their behavior had been enabled by their upbringing. "Loving them means preparing them," he informed the audience. The parents had failed to teach their children, through structured house rules, how to carry the abstract notions of unconditional love away from a specific location.
The siblings were not pleased by Dr. Phil's offer. It was clear that life at home meant more to them than free groceries and no chores. "If they don't want us..." the eldest began and then shrugged while the middle daughter struggled against tears. The issue, for the siblings, was not mooching but belonging versus abandonment. And curiously, the validity of their reactions was re-enforced by Dr. Phil; he referred to the family's four younger children who are "entitled to be there [at home]." The older children were expected to detach themselves; the younger siblings were not. In the end, how they were raised would determine their ability to move from one set of expectations to another. (See Note 2.)
How do suburban children handle this tension between the place of unconditional/forgiving love ("you can always come home again") and the place of limited resources? How do they negotiate between the houses of childhood and adulthood, the desire to return home (to safety) and the expectation of detachment? I attempted to answer these questions through surveys and interviews. I sent a survey to my six siblings and filled it out myself. I then requested random acquaintances and friends to fill out an adapted survey. I then interviewed my parents regarding their childhood homes and the three houses they have shared during their marriage: Hoover Road; Tecumseh Way and Peaks Island.
My parents, Hugh Woodbury and Joyce Nicholes Woodbury, married in 1955. Their first house was a five-room Cape Cod. They bought it as an "equity" house and sold it nine years later at a profit. At the time, Schenectady, New York--home to General Electric--was a flourishing area. My parents' second house (the house I grew up in) was part of a new suburb called Indian Hills. My parents bought lot #79 on Tecumseh Way, a cul-de-sac. They worked with the developer's architect to make changes to the house plans and checked on the house's construction every day. Ten years ago, my parents moved to a salt box style house on Peaks Island, Maine.
My survey questions focused mostly on the Tecumseh Way house, the family home for thirty-two years. That house is a ranch with an open basement. Through the front door you enter a small foyer which fans out in three directions: around the corner into the kitchen (at the front of the house) and dining room; down the hall to the living room and upstairs bedrooms; down the stairs to the playroom, basement, laundry and another three bedrooms. Since the house is built on a hill, the playroom has full windows, including a sliding glass door. My parents later redesigned the kitchen-dining area, moving the connecting door, adding atrium doors to the dining room and a larger window to the kitchen.
My parents chose the Tecumseh Way lot based on its closeness to our church (which was in the process of being built when they moved in). They wanted to live within walking distance of either our church or my father's work. "Walking distance" is something of an understatement; our back gate let out onto the church's parking lot. The church bordered undeveloped land, covered by woods. During my childhood, several contractors tried to get permission to clear the land. They never succeeded, much to the neighborhood's collective relief. My siblings and I spent hours in the woods, which contained walking trails, a swamp, an unfinished cabin and lots and lots of field mice.
As entertainment, we not only had the woods, but the church parking lot (for roller-skating), the cul-de-sac (for four square and baseball), and a third of an acre yard. Our lot had originally belonged to an orchard. We had five of the original apple trees on our yard, one of which became a tree house. My father pruned and sprayed the trees, and we harvested the apples for applesauce and apple juice. In fact, my parents are great gardeners. During their thirty-two years in the Tecumseh Way house, they added an espaliered apple tree, plum trees, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries and expanded my mother's front and backyard flower gardens. They also built a lower and upper patio onto the side of the house behind the garage.
There is a running joke amongst my brothers that my father was always ordering them to dig holes, either for my mom's flower beds or for the vegetable gardens. Several of my brothers (in mock revenge) have put my father to work on their own yards when my parents visit. Yard work was not a gendered activity, however (I often wished that it was) since we all had to weed, pick up branches, collect berries, apples and vegetables. I was spared the hole-digging, thankfully, but I still had to mow the grass.
In fact, some of the strongest memories shared by my siblings, of the Tecumseh Way house, are of the yard. Of the interior, the kitchen and playroom are remembered best (the former, the center of family activity; the latter, the center of sibling activity). Overall, our present reactions to the Tecumseh Way house are mostly nostalgic; a few of us have expressed interest in "cloning" the basement or upstairs bathroom, but the house itself excites no feelings of covetousness. On the other hand, several of us have driven by the house since it was sold in 1997, which evinces some lingering connection; the house, today, appears "smaller," "overgrown," not "as nice [a landscape]" and older. I was surprised by how little it had changed, which may had added, rather than detracted, from the aura of neglect.
In general, the Tecumseh Way house performed more of an utilitarian function for our family than a emotional one. It was a remarkably easy house to move around in. The kitchen could be accessed from the garage, the dining room and the front hall. From the dining room, you could access the living room, the study and the hall to the upstairs bedrooms. The playroom was in easy reach but at the same time, separate; children could play games away from visiting adults without feeling exiled to Siberia. From the playroom, you could reach the laundry room, the downstairs bedrooms, the basement, and the backyard. There was a laundry chute between the floors and a storage cellar in the basement.
The house's utilitarianism does not mean that it did not also feel like a home. The open kitchen/eating area generated a relaxed atmosphere; we ate together there almost every night. This room later gained a small sofa and a stereo system. There were bookcases in every room, both the public rooms (which included my father's study) and the bedrooms. We could borrow books from any of the public rooms. As well as a bookcase, rocking horse and ping-pong table, the downstairs playroom gained a rug and a wood stove in my pre-teen years. The more formal pieces, such as the piano, could be found upstairs in the living room. Although we were not supposed to eat or play in the living room when I was younger, that rule had been relaxed by the time I was a teen; many of my youthful memories are of people lounging about the living room, reading, listening to the radio, playing instruments, or working on puzzles. We did not own a television set—technically; my brother Eugene reportedly salvaged and hid televisions in his bedroom for years. Absent a television, we had a microwave and a computer (we weren't savages!).
My home-like feelings towards this practical and unsentimental structure are explained by Hazel Easthope in her article "A Place Called Home." "Home," Hazel states, involves constancy, day-to-day routines, privacy and a "base around which identities are constructed." According to E.S. Casey, cited in the same article, a 'habitus' is "being at home in a particular place in an unselfconscious way." I tackled this latter issue in the survey to my siblings when I asked, "Did you, as child, feel a right to the Hoover or Tecumseh Way house? That it was your home (in a literal and figurative sense) as much as our parents'?" In general, my siblings replied in the affirmative although a few balked at my use of the phrase "right to." My sister Beth reported, "I always felt each house was my home, but my parents were in charge." "[I felt that way] as a child," my brother Dan answered, although "those feelings vanished when I married." My brother Henry did not feel "a right to" the house in general, but did think of the "downstairs . . . as the 'boys' part of the house, that as a group, we boys owned that part of the house." More tellingly, nearly all of my siblings referred to our parents' current house on Peaks Island as specifically "Mom and Dad's," although interest has been expressed in keeping that particular house in the family.
In many ways, my siblings' interest in the Peaks Island house resembles their reactions to our grandmother Woodbury's house in Pasadena, California (now sold). Beth wrote, "[L]ong road trips to California probably made that house seem more interesting. It was a 'destination'!" while Henry "threw away [pictures of the Pasadena house]" since "they didn't really mean anything compared to my memories of visiting there." Likewise, interest in the Peaks Island house focus on my parents' residency there, the destination (Maine), the uniqueness (an island) and the view (the ocean). A trip and its attendant memories are valued over a specific structure. (See Note 3.)
This detachment of memories and feelings from place runs throughout my siblings' surveys. Despite affirming a "right to" the Tecumseh Way house, my siblings all described 'home' (a later question) abstractly. Home, my sister Ann wrote, is "where I feel comfortable." "[It is] definitely a feeling, not a place," Beth stated; both my sisters pointed to relationships as a defining element of a home. Dan agreed, stating that "home is where the family is." "The place doesn't need to physically exist," Henry asserted, going on to mention that a home's identity is specific to the individual. My brother Joe agreed: it is a "state of being" and changes with age, while Eugene, in a follow up to the survey, wrote, "The same lack of sentiment that makes us much less inclined to start range wars over the 'family home,' also makes us less inclined to care that much about the house we grew up in." He argued that while human beings attach more sentimentality to land (as any Jeffersonian would agree), it is easier to deal with property since property rights "can be passed on, over and over, and to complete strangers." He postulated that the human proclivity for sentiment can account for attachments to summer homes, high schools and particular towns rather than houses and yards (he cited Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon stories as an example).
Yet place is always, must always, be at work in the harvesting of home-like emotions. "Everyone needs at least one place," Ann wrote. We are, after all, inhabiting a spot, location, point of longitude and latitude at all times. What we attach to that habitation, however, is variable, age-dependent, memory-induced, culturally promoted as well as individual and idiosyncratic. My siblings and I are, perhaps, more sanguine in our dissociation of "home" and "place" than many people, but the tendency to abstract appeared also in the non-sibling surveys. To the question, "Which of [your childhood] houses felt most like home? Why?" most (middle-class) participants gave relationship-oriented answers: "that's where my family was all together"; "[it was] peaceful, full of the spirit, unconditional love"; "I did a lot of growing up there"; "good neighbors. All felt a "right" either to their childhood houses or to their personal rooms in those houses, but few felt an overwhelming desire to return to a particular location. The opposing reactions of (necessary) attachment and (still more necessary) departure from the family house are at work.
How do we, as suburban products, manage these linked, if conflicting sensations? The answer lies in the surveys. Most of the responses could be summed up by the cliché, "That was then, this is now." Eugene referred to "home" as a "temporary staging area." Dan, as cited earlier, thought of the Tecumseh Way house as "his" until he was married. Beth wrote, "I quit feeling Tecumseh Way was my home when I was a sophomore or junior in college. Emotionally or biologically or both—I was ready to establish a home of my own." Joe "considered 'home' to be where Mom and Dad were" until he "left BYU to [go to] California." When I asked my siblings if they felt sad when my parents sold the Tecumseh Way house, Ann--who had been living there with her family at the time--replied, "I didn't realize how much I had missed not having 'our own' house until we moved . . . I knew we wouldn't be [at the Tecumseh Way house] permanently."
The common thread is that change in one's personal life naturally, rather than forcibly, alters one's identification of "home". The other survey participants expressed similar feelings: "as I got older and in my teens when I became very concerned with my own privacy I became more aware that I was living in my parents' home and that it wasn't my home" (emphasis in answer). A young, married woman wrote, "I will have to find my own place--start over new--make my own home." In this context, the moochers on Dr. Phil failed not so much to detach themselves from Mom and Dad's house but rather, in Dr. Norton's words, to "better their fortunes." In contrast to Dr. Norton, contemporary middleclass America perceives home and change as connected. A proper, normal sense of home will be achieved when we undergo a life-altering experience.
This is in line with parenting advice that burgeoned in the twentieth century. The end of the nineteenth century saw a growing fascination in humans as developing, evolving beings. In 1950, Erik Erikson revealed his "8-stage theory of personality development," which was to affect generations of parenting advisors up to the current day. We are individuals who yet share certain behaviors and a collective process of maturation. The language/concept of development was at work well before 1950. About his childhood home in Pasadena, my father remarked, "[After completing college] I was ready to move, not only out of the home, but out to explore the world. I did not have any problems moving about as far away as I could." My mother, despite detailed and fond memories of her childhood home, wrote, "I never expected to live there as an adult...I can recall vividly that one day, as I walked to the Upper Campus [of BYU], I thought, 'I have lived in Provo for 20 years and that is long enough.'" Both my parents come from mobile pioneer stock; neither felt a tugging "attachment to the native soil" when they moved more than a 3,000 miles from their families. They lived in upstate New York until ten years ago when they solidified their movement eastward by retiring to Maine. To a large extent, their church involvement in each new location has provided them with a continuing "home base."
The concept of the changing yet stable home life is encapsulated in Christiane Northrup's recent book Mother-Daughter Wisdom. Dr. Northrup presents a metaphor of life in the shape of a house. Parts of the house represent different points of one's life. With birth, menopause and death, we move between floors (the book is directed towards women but can also be applied to men). Within each floor, we move between rooms. In each room, we face and conquer challenges. The result is a whole life, a complete building, but the experiences within depend upon movement and change. One does not return to the basement.
Dr. Northrup's conception of life as a house is directly in line with our contemporary attitude towards house and home. It is not only natural but necessary and good to re-apply our feelings of home to new places (floors). Only by doing so, can we grow and mature. Likewise, a changing sense of "home" is a natural phenomenon amongst middle-class suburbanites that should be reinforced.
Will "home" continue to be abstracted to the point where it has no relevance to "place" and is it healthy to maintain such an abstracted concept? Is it possible, human nature being what it is? In her article "The Meaning of Home to Five Elderly Women," Melinda Swenson argues that "attachment to place" provides these older women with "links . . . to intimacy, safety, emotional responses," and that such attachment is necessary to their continual health. If we divest ourselves too absolutely of attachment to place, will our physical beings suffer? On the other hand, to re-invoke Star Trek, is it necessary for us to become more detached in order to handle a growing, changing world and universe? A star-faring generation would need to detach itself emotionally not only from a location determined by latitude and longitude but from an actual planet. This smacks of science-fiction, but our television indicates that these thoughts exist in our culture. How far do we go before we no longer are home?
Possibly, the trend of detachment from location is moving in the opposite direction. In her 2004 book Home by Design, Sarah Susanka argues that a sense of "home" can be created physically. It is not just the feelings we bring into it. In a very Beecher Stowe-like presentation, she lists space, light and order as the three design factors which "makes us want to settle in [a specific house] and stay awhile." This is due to "physiological instincts"--geometrical forms and patterns to which humans naturally respond. Through listening to those instincts and consulting good architects, we can "create the experiences of home that we crave."
Like so many cultural issues, only time will show whether "home" and "place" will remained linked or whether they will sever completely. It is most likely, of course, that they will vary from individual to individual, family to family. "There's no place like home," Dorothy said, but whether a future Dorothy would still end up back in Kansas cannot yet be determined.
Notes
1. Charles Eliot Norton, "The Lack of Old Homes in America," Scribner's Magazine 5, no. 5 (1889), 636; I first encountered this article in David Schuyler's article, "Old Dwellings, Traditional Landscapes: Impressionist Artists and the Rediscovery of American Places."
2. "The Boomerang Generation," Dr. Phil (ABC, November 9, 2005). Other advice writers agree with Dr. Phil's solution, although not all of them can offer a month's free rent. In her book Parents Forever, Sidney Callahan recommends letting adult children return home "as a temporary measure" but only with an end goal in sight while Kathy Peel goes so far as to suggest that the "boomerang syndrome" can be a positive experience--the adult child is retreating home temporarily in order to find balance before moving on to the next stage of her life. Peel believes that the key to a good relationship between parents and adult children hinges on the parents' house. In a very Stowe-like approach, she recommends that parents make their house cozy and inviting, even to the point of "provid[ing] interesting books, magazines, and catalogs . . . a bedside reading lamp with a three-way bulb . . . a special place for mail." With so much encouragement, no wonder suburban children get confused! (Callahan, 37; and Peel, Family for Life, 96.)
3. Additionally, nearly all of us expressed squeamishness at the idea of caring for a family home (a characteristic that mitigates against the possibility of a shared summer residence). Henry wrote that he had no "desire to have a house, with its nooks and crannies and dust-covered furniture, be preserved," and Beth forthrightly proclaimed, "What a pain in the neck [to have to care for a generational home]!"
Indian Hills in Glenville, New York
"Upstairs" of Tecumseh Way house, drawn by Joyce Woodbury
"Downstairs" of Tecumseh Way house, drawn by Joyce Woodbury
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1 comment:
Following up on the Buckaroo Banzai principle, I consider William Kelly a case in point. He left the Isle of Man, traveled to Nauvoo (probably via New Orleans), joined the Mormon Battalion and walked all the way to San Diego, mustered out, walked to Sacramento and then to Salt Lake City.
Them's some happy feet, as Steve Martin would say.
I think there literally is a "get up and go" gene vs. a "settle down and stay" gene. An interesting contrast is this Victor Hanson essay, in which he says, "I don't think farming in the same place for six generations is a dead weight that keeps you shackled, doing the identical thing year in and year out."
Well, my hat's off to him, but I do.
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