Friday, August 2, 2013

Hometown

While I consider this my hometown now, it's an odd place in some ways. Identity is very important here; you were either born here, and therefore 'from' here, or not. Local politics are almost exclusively based on that identity, few officials are not 'from' here. Here are some of the things I see every day as I drive around my hometown.

A little music to listen to while you look.


(open in 'new tab', otherwise it screws up the pictures)














Maybe the reason I like it here is it's like me.......seen better days, a little shabby, but still here. And, like me, it's hoping for better days. 














14 comments:

  1. If I have my counting right, the buildings in pictures 1, 3 and 6 are awesome. You don't see detail like that anymore. Number 2, well, all I can is it looks odd. Like somebody thought, "hey, this would look good" and like some of my ideas didn't turn out so hot. Is number 5 your answer to the leaning tower of Pisa? Works for me. :)

    Some of the pictures I didn't quite understand like the last one. All those vehicles...extra sleeping room for guests?

    Mike, I couldn't resist being snarky, hope you don't mind. Truthfully, it looks like a good place to live. I really like this blog. You showed it all and that's great. If I ever do one of Phil Campbell, I'll follow your lead.

    Really good photography, BTW!

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  2. From a houses perspective, it's fairly representative. Sorta. More just ones that struck me on a particular day. The town has a lot of houses on the historical register, many built ca 1900 by mining magnates.

    Cars that have come to their final resting ground are not uncommon in some parts of town.

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  3. I like the tilting one.

    This are has similar buildings (the shabbier ones, I mean) and I just love them.

    Oh, and the rusting cars left lying about - I've heard them called "yard dogs."

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    1. I should also do a post on the great Victorian places in town, there must be 100 of them. This made the town seem shabbier than it really is, somewhat.

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  4. I had that song going through my head already, from the moment I saw the post title! Thanks for this. Can you add a picture of your house, too?

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    1. I put so many pictures of the house on other posts, winter, etc, that didn't occur to me. Want me to send you one? The bluebells are still blooming along the fence.

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  5. Pretty damned cool little hometown if you ask me. I love small towns but I'm stuck in my hometown which has become a metropolis. Crowded places just mess with your rhythm. Know what I mean?

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    1. I do know what you mean. My actual 'hometown' has changed so much as to be unrecognizable to me. It was 9K people when I graduated HS, it's over 80K now.

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    2. Do you feel any... I don't know, regret? that you raised your kids in big cities and now those are our hometowns, the places we'd never wanted to leave, and we're decidedly city folk?

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    3. No, not at all. I think my tendency to like small-town life is from where I was raised. But I chose a profession that requires a large city to support it, and I knew that. You had some exposure to small town life growing up, I'm thinking of Sebastopol, but that's not what you chose. Emily had her small town experience as an adult, and that's not what she chose either.

      I've always enjoyed spending time in big cities, I like the things offered, good food, theater, etc for periods of time. But at this point in my life this gives me quiet and easy access to rivers and woods.

      I do wish one of you had developed a taste for fishing though. I've got a boatload of fly fishing equipment and fly tying stuff that nobody will want.

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  6. My Hometown makes me cry every time I hear it. Coupled with these photos - almost too much. My 'hometown' is the 9th Ward, New Orleans, still pretty much a ghost town after 8 years.

    A couple of the photos here allude to a grander time in Butte, the mining 'glory days.' Would love to see some of the grand dames, and your home, too, for that matter.

    Thanks for this post, Mike.

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    1. Hey Martha
      I could have just as easily posted the wonderful houses of my general neighborhood, grand Victorians, craftsman homes, or the modern ranch-style houses out on the 'flats'. These just struck me in an hours drive around the town.

      The 'Glory Days' of the mining days were mostly glorious for the mine owners and investors. We now have the largest urban superfund site in the US due to the pollution of the mining and smelting.

      We probably have something in common with New Orleans, a natural disaster caused the ghost town there, a human one caused the state of things here.

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    2. It will always be the owners of wealth and the means to acquire it who have grand 'glory days,' and will have the grand dame homes (although that style has died out, too) that the money and power buy.

      However, we all have glory days, even if it amounts to a few hours in one day of our lives. Butte had glory days just as New Orleans did. Some of those beautiful homes you mentioned in response to SAW's comment - regardless of how they came to be built and by whom - would be nice to see. I liked the Victorians in Port Townsend, though I saw them before the gentrification movement gussied them up. Some things, despite their pedigrees, need to be saved, preserved; renovated perhaps: architectural artifacts that tell our histories, rich and poor alike.

      Climbing down from my soapbox, now.

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    3. Your soapbox is always welcome here.

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