Guest Blog: Kelly Gamble

Twitter should be considered an author's match making service. Not for dates (although I'm sure they occur, too), but for friendship with like minded people. Kelly and I met through the 140 character limit social networking site, and her friendship and writing expertise has helped me greatly. Hopefully she feels the same way about me. I asked Kelly to write a guest post and gave her creative freedom, and she wrote this, saying this is what my blog makes her think about. So enough about me, I give you Kelly....

'Home' is a Small Town in Kansas

Living in Las Vegas, where most of the people are 'imports' from somewhere else, a question that comes up a lot is 'Where are you from?' This has always been a difficult question for me, because I have lived in a lot of different places. I attended twenty-two different schools before I graduated from high school, and if I include college, I am currently enrolled in school number twenty-nine. Yes, it is amazing I have learned anything at all.

Moving so much as a child did have its advantages. When you are always the 'new kid' you have two choices: either live in a cocoon or learn to make friends quickly. My brothers and I were not much for cocoons, so we tended to follow the second path. As adults, we often joke that we can walk in a crowded room and between us, know everyone in a matter of minutes.

I'm not complaining about my childhood--it was what it was. But the thing I feel was most missing was that sense of 'home' we all develop. That sense of being 'from' a place in this world. The idea we 'belong' to a piece of land, or a community, and no matter how far we travel, there is always that place called Home.

I was born in a small town--Baxter Springs, Kansas. It sits in the southeast corner of the state, on the historic Route 66, just miles from the Missouri and Oklahoma state line. There is a large sign, just as you cross the Spring River leading into town that boasts 'the First Cowtown in Kansas'. I lived there until I was three and after moving, spent summers there at my grandparents house. I returned when I was twelve for three more years. It's quite a bit different from the other places I had lived as a child, being mostly a 'city' girl. And, as an adult, I have lived, again, in nothing but large cities. But it is this small town that I call home.

Why?

It is in this town that I lived the memories that most make me smile--and the ones that most haunt me. It is there I met friends that I have managed to keep my entire life--my 'childhood' friends. It is there I first swam in a creek, had my first crush and first learned to ride an old horse named 'Tex'. Although I am far from a country girl, I was comfortable there. It became 'my' place--the people, the schools, the river. And although I don't visit very often, I know it is the one place in this world I could go, cross that bridge and be welcomed.

I think in defining home, it isn't a matter of where you were born, or where you have lived the longest. I think it is the idea of where your mind goes when you are feeling sad--that comfort place. Where you are when you have a pleasant memory, where you have cried and laughed, loved and lost, made good choices and bad. It is where you have most lived, not based on time, but on experience. It is that place that may make you crazy at times, but you still know you can find your way to the Street Car Bridge and still know you can always find a friend.

So when someone I meet asks me 'Where are you from?', I have a standard response. I've been in Las Vegas for seventeen years, so I guess this is where I am now from. But 'home' is a small town in southeast Kansas.


Kelly Stone Gamble is a freelance writer and author of Ragtown, a historical novel set during the building of the Hoover Dam. Visit her blog or on twitter @KellySGamble