The Departed  One by one, nearly all my people (including me)
have left my hometown. Is it still my hometown?  April 2010By
Comments  AGE OF INNOCENCE: The author playing in his front yard
in 1967.  If you happen to be from a place like
Brownsville—meaning not from a city like Houston or Dallas or
Austin or San Antonio—and you tell someone you are from this
place, the first question that person will most likely ask is
whether you still have family back home. The next question,
assuming there is a next question, will be about how often you
go home to visit. They ask because they are nice and friendly
and because this is what nice and friendly people do. They ask
because they know it takes some effort to get to this place that
you are from and because they understand that no one goes there
to see anything new but only to see who and what they left
behind, which, in most cases, happens to be a piece of
themselves.  From Austin, where I have now lived for most of the
past 25 years, a visit to Brownsville is 724 m