Today is the first day of Blogtember! I am pretty excited to be doing this.  Ask me again in two weeks and see if I still feel the same way....

If you remember yesterday, I talked about what I would be doing for the month of September.  I am really hoping this little series helps me to get back on track with my writing.  Here's hoping!

And now, on with the show...

Today's prompt:  Describe where or what you come from. The people, the places, and/or the factors that make up who you are.

Some of my early readers may remember The Month of 30 Series and, in that series, I talked a little about where I grew up and my childhood.  However, I never touched on the actual place.  

Source

I grew up in the country.  I grew up in a house off of a rural highway that had the perfect straight stretch for drag racing.  It still does and they still do, much to my parents dismay at 2 am on a Saturday morning.  We didn't know our neighbors on the right and a field was on our left.  Cows, goats, and the occasional pig would turn up in our yard...or on our vehicle in one incident involving a goat.  Summer excitement was watching the state repave the road, playing baseball in the front yard, going to town for ice cream, and going to the river.  I fell asleep to the sound of crickets, owls, whippoorwills, and the train that went through the distant town at about midnight; it's lonesome whistle lulling me to sleep.

The town that was listed as my address was a population of about 500 people.  It has since grown to a little over a thousand by now (I think that's what the sign said the last time I went down).  I recall a bank, a grocery store, a library, a city hall, a restaurant, and a park (not much of one,  but still a park).  I enjoyed the library the most.  It was small, but it was one of my favorite places to go.  I could go to whatever world I wanted to go to, for free, thanks to the library.  I'd devour those books in a few days and I would have to wait patiently until we could go into town again. 

We mostly kept to ourselves out in the country.  As I got older, I went to my friend's houses-they were either in a town or closer to a town and it was just easier to do it that way.  I had a few sleepovers when I was younger, but we mostly just liked to keep it private out there.  It added to the quietness of it all.

As I got older, I complained about being bored a lot, but that's mostly because the three acres we lived on had long ago been explored and it had lost its luster.  By then it was boys, music, books, and clothes anyway that kept me interested.  

I have never totally forgotten where I grew up.  It's the reason I am the way I am.  Where I grew up is the  desire in me to live a simple and peaceful life.  It's the reason I love the smell combination of fresh cut grass and an incoming rain storm.  It's the reason I know how to creek walk and catch craw-dad's.  It's the reason I had a rope swing, a bonfire or two, and an obsession with being barefoot, which my husband just shakes his head at.  (Hey, can YOU walk on any type of surface barefooted and it not hurt?  I can.)  

And, at moments when I am down there, if I listen very carefully, I can hear the slamming of a wooden screen door.  That is home, folks.  That is home.