No, I'm Not From Around Here.

I've said I'm not from around here for a long time. We moved here in 1969, so in fact, I have lived here for 42 years now, most of my life. But if I'm not from here then where am I from? I don't even have a home town, technically. My mother had me in a hospital in Stockport, England, then brought me back to Long Eaton, her home town. When I was barely two we moved to South Africa, then a year later to Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), then five years later back to England then on to the United States. We lived in Utah for seven years, Wisconsin for one year, Florida for four years, then here to Texas. I thought it would be another brief stay, but this is where my roots finally took. That said I have never felt like a Texan. Something in my genes doesn't quite jibe with all things Texan, and I often feel like a stranger in a strange land, especially during football season, or endless dry, hot summers, or with anything involving big trucks, big hair, big churches, and big politics. It's a loud, brash state and I must have a British village soul. And yet I do envy people who have a sense of place, who feel rooted to a history, to ancestors, to traditions. Our family has always been a bit isolated, a bit nomadic. My father was an orphan who was uprooted from Russia during the Revolution and sent to relatives in Poland. he was always a restless soul, and much of our family's travels were because of his wanderlust.

   (On the ship to the U.S.-1957. Thrilling lifeboat drill. We're all in the middle.)

But the funny thing is, after all this time I finally do feel a sense of community, a sense of this place, this wide open space. I find myself defending Lubbock to outsiders or visitors who complain about its barren flatness, its conservativism, its lack of culture, its resistance to change, because a lot of that is not true if you know where to look. My Lubbock is full of culture and arts and interesting people, and innate friendliness, and beautiful skies, and cool evenings on the patio, and an endless horizon of possibilities.