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Home has a Hold on Me

Category:  Orientation > Wireless 101 > Food For Thought

My last post talked about Small Towns, and the post before it about the impact of Rural Broadband.

I'm getting all sappy here: as I concluded that post on small towns with an image of the Texas Hill Country, where I have a small ranch - call it a ranchette, only 20 acres but I know every inch...the images I looked at made me realize how pretty the central Texas Hill Country is, and how much I like it. Somehow, I was reminded of Gary P. Nunn, the Texas songwriter, and his song, You Ask Me What I like About Texas.

Years ago, in my wild, misspent youth, I was a bartender at the Last Waterhole Saloon in Amsterdam's Red Light District It was fall of 1982, I was 25 and single, and that period only lasted from sometime in September until just after Christmas - only about 13 weeks, when you think about it...

During my day shift, I bartended and checked people in to the youth hostel upstairs (the saloon was on the Warmoesstraat, just 2 blocks from the train station, just off the Damrak, the main street in downtown Amsterdam). The Last Waterhole was one of those cafes you hear about in Amsterdam, where you can get stuff to smoke...it was, quite frankly, one of the wildest places I've ever been to on the planet...

Picture of a pub on the Warmoesstraat...

The Last Waterhole looked something like this, only darker, and much more sinister, more skanky, well, just considerably more scummy, if you will. Three pool tables and a stage and heroin junkies I had to kick out during the day...Needless to say, many stories ensued....it seems like another lifetime ago, indeed, it was. If my kids only knew! I used to describe the bar scene as something similar to a bar scene in the Star Wars.

Imagine the thick smoke, young people from all over the world, partying like they were, well, on vacation ... loud rock and roll ...green Grolsch bottles and draft Heinekens in little pils glasses...

One story connects Amsterdam to Texas: Gary P. Nunn was coming for a European Tour in 1983, and the Pride of Texas band had gotten back together in order to back him up on his tour. They practiced during the day, during my shifts, so I listened to the same songs, over. and over. and over. again. and again.

Some nights I drove with the band to Belgium, or northern Holland, and acted as a roadie and assistant for their shows. Other days I drove with the promoter and saloon owner out to Paris, or Stockholm, to line up gigs for Gary and his tour with my friends from the Pride of Texas...

It was a gas to be a cowboy in Europe. But I did miss Texas.

I bring all this up to underscore the importance of home for all of us, the pull it has on our heartstrings, and the association of geography and location. I think you have to be an immigrant or an ex patriot at least once in your life to really understand what it's like to miss home - deeply. And I was only a temporary immigrant back then, hardly with an experience to match those of millions of immigrants ... but I did miss home that year I spent bumming around Europe.

I think it's especially poignant when you reach a certain age and can appreciate the value of home, family, and community. And I think it's very heartfelt, this attachment to home, especially for those who live in small towns, because the "home" experience is so much more immediate in small towns.

Posted on April 23, 2008 at 07:39 PM

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