Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 309, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 December 1916 — Home Town Helps [ARTICLE]

Home Town Helps

THAT HOME-TOWN FEELING Something That Is Never Forgotten, No Matter How £ar Wanderings May Carry One. Most people grow up with the hometown feeling for the old town, the town where they were youngsters, where, they knew every kitten and puppy, every street and every alley, every Cracker barrel and every candy counter, everybody and everything at least for many a block around. It was not of course a fueling of which you were uncomfortably conscious. As likely as not you never knew that you had it until yoircame back after the summer in the country or perhaps came home from school for the holidays. It was then that the home-town feeling grew large within you, a fine, big, warm spot of feeling. Ir it lmpp ned that you lived in a medium-sized town in those days, the sight of the station was a deeply satisfying thing. It seemed as you rattled along in the little old hack, past the courthouse square and across the one street car line, that you had come back to yourself, a very comfortable sort of feeling indeed. Perhaps you lived in or near a much smaller village, but it was the same home-town feeling you had as you climbed under the heavy, horsey-smelling robe into the buggy and rode down the street. The general store, the white church, the brick house where the one rich family lived and the patched-up cabin where the one poor family lived were so familiar to you that you were immediately conscious of every new sign in the store window and every new- patch in the cabin roof. And if, perhaps, you lived in a much larger town, the. distant smoke, the insistent clamor, the crowds and the rush of traffic were the things you were looking fpr and the things that satisfied the home-town

feeling. The home-town feeling for the new town, the town where you go after you are grown up, the town where you work, the town that adopts you or that you adopt, is, of coursq, not so natural or easy a thing. At least it is ,not a thing which can be deliberately acquired along with a new job or even with the actual purchase of a new house. It is not a thing that comes with friends of with pleasant associations. It seems to come just of itself and it coined, some day, all of a sudden. You may be standing in a crowded, street car, you may be pushing your way 'through the market, you may be sitting on your own back step while supper is cooking. It is certain to come when you are not thinking or caring particularly about it, .and when it comes it lias come to stay.