HOME

born in a quaint little town called New York City. OK, maybe quaint it ain’t, but it will forever be my hometown. Back when I was growing up there, the ‘City’ was financially bankrupt. Social services were cut, unemployment rates were sky high, inflation was rampant, there were constant strikes so one week there would be no garbage pick-up, the next week no public transportation and so on. It was mess. Times Square was full of porno theatres, the bridges were collapsing, crime was up, the streets were filthy, and the subway trains were covered with graffiti and unsafe to ride. (With glowing images like that I really should start writing travel brochures.)

Luckily the part of New York City I lived in was not that bad. It was an old German neighborhood that was starting to become a little more Italian. We had very little petty crime in our area although there was the occasional mafia hit like in 1979 when the City’s big crime boss Carmine Galante** was gunned down in a restaurant two miles from my house. As New Yorkers you take that it all in stride and still find a way to be proud of your town.

In the late 1980’s the ‘City’ went through an amazing renaissance and truly became a wonderful place to live but by that time I was long gone. As a kid, the concept of me living in Texas seemed about as likely as the Twin Towers being knocked out of the skyline. As you get older you realize you just never know what might happen. When I visit New York I still feel a comfortable sense of familiarity but it does not feel like home anymore.

When I was in the middle of those ever so fun Junior High School years, my folks moved me down to sleepy serene Miami Florida. Calm by New York standards, I lived in Miami during the riots of the 1980, the Mariel Boatlift and the Cocaine Wars. It was tough adjusting to such a different lifestyle but in hindsite it has become obvious that spending my formative years in Florida had a profoundly positive effect in creating the person I have grown up to be. It took awhile but I grew to love Miami and eventually felt like it was as much my hometown as New York was.

While I was attending college in Tallahassee Florida my folks moved out of Miami so when I graduated, even though they offered me a room in their new Orlando house, I felt I did not have a town to call home anymore. Over the years that followed I bounced around several different Florida cities and even briefly moved back up to New York but I never really put down any deep roots. Everywhere I lived felt like a place I was staying until I found a real home.

I’m sure it was this lack of feeling like I belonged anywhere that kept me on the road during the 15 years I traveled for work. A comfortable routine developed, a few months of hard work in some city, then a few weeks of visiting friends all over the country, a quick trip to whereever I called homebase at the time for a few weeks, a little more traveling to hang with friends and then back to work. Over and over this cycle repeated. As issolating as it was, I loved that I spent long enough in a city to really get the real feel of the town and it’s people.

I was away from home so much that it led to some odd events. Three different times friends moved all my belongings to a new house that I never saw until I got home. They would tell me about the place I was going to live and sent me the address with a map so I would know where to come home to. Friends in various cities all over the country had rooms in their houses that they refered to as Dan’s room because I frequently visited for several weeks at a time. My last house in St Pete Florida was in a cool funky neighborhood only nine blocks from the beach yet I knew I would not be there for a long time because the city never really felt like home to me.

Sometimes I think back to those days and I miss the adventures. I really miss seeing my friends and family. I do not miss the lonliness and I really do not miss that feeling of knowing I could fit in anywhere but that I belonged nowhere. It was on one of these many trips that I met my wife. I always said when I met the right person I would stop traveling and I did. I met her while working just outside of Dallas and I have pretty much been here ever since.

That was over seven years ago and I have to admit that until recently it still felt like this was just another stop on the highway and that I really did not belong here. That changed a few weeks ago when my wife and I bought a house. A neat house that I think we will be really comfortable in. A cool place that I can really call home and mean it. I’m not saying this is the last house I will ever buy and I am not saying that I will live in Texas until I drop dead but maybe now I might finally feel a little less like a nomad and a little more like I have a city to call home. **http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmine_Galante