Just a sucker for hometowns

Let's see, "home is where the heart is, you can never go home," or "home away from home."

What else can I say about home? That'll probably do it.

I recently mentioned on Facebook and to my family that during a visit to my hometown of Hot Springs, S.D., I felt the Black Hills pulling me back.

Walking my dog at Butler Park, I was surrounded by the beauty of the Hills. I thought to myself, "who wouldn't want to live here?"

I guess you can count yours truly as one who couldn't wait to get out of their hometown as a kid. For the most part, I think most of us felt that way, whether we stayed or left.

Now 30-some years later, you look around and realize that your hometown isn't just a bunch of houses with nothing to do. It's a pretty spectacular place. Funny how that happens.

I think I actually realized that about seven years ago when I took Teresa "home" for the first time to meet the family. Just as we were coming down the hill on Highway 18, we could see Battle Mountain in the background, surrounded by hills on your left and on your right.

It was a site that despite seeing a million times before, it suddenly opened my eyes. I remember pointing it out to Teresa, telling her the story of Battle Mountain. It was Teresa's first trip to the Black Hills and despite her being nervous about meeting my family for the first time, she noticed too.

We tried to go back to Hot Springs two or three times a year until Teresa's health just got the better of her, the last time in 2007 for my 30th high school class reunion (yeah, I'm that old). By that time, Teresa was in love with Hot Springs and admitted that if we ever moved from Laramie, she wouldn't mind living in Hot Springs.

I've got to admit, I never really thought I would consider coming "home," but the circumstances have changed with Teresa's passing and my problems finding a sports writing job here again. I told my mother recently that I finally have come to the conclusion that I don't have a problem coming back and working for the local weekly newspaper writing sports, covering good old Hot Springs High School.

I admit that there was a time when that wasn't even a thought in my pea-brain. Like most journalists, especially sports writers, going from covering Division I college sports for a daily newspaper to small high school sports at a small weekly would have seemed like a serious demotion.

But that was then, this is now.

That's not to say that if I am offered a a full-time sports writing position at this time in Laramie, I wouldn't jump on it.

It's not like I want to leave Laramie, but I'm finding fewer and fewer reasons to stay. I was thinking recently that I have called Laramie "home" for a reason -- I have lived here about as long as I have lived anywhere in my life, including my hometown of Hot Springs. I was 23 years and six months old when I left for my first "adult" job as sports editor of the Northern Wyoming Daily News in Worland.

I've lived in Laramie for 23 years and four months, with a couple of years also spent in Mount Vernon, Wash.

Even if I decide to move on, there's no guarantee it would be back "home." Feeling wanted again as a sports writer could lead me just about anywhere.

Or I could win the lottery and buy a house two blocks from Lambeau Field.

That would work, too.