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I have been very interested in the subject of roots, and how rooted people are to the area they live. This largely came about as a result of my one friend who is heavily routed in a 15-mile radius of southeastern Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, but how I am barely rooted at all in either the town I live in or the town where my parents live, and I used to live.
Here are an explination of the ratings that I put up above:
Not Rooted: You could leave your area tomorrow and it would go completely unnoticed to anyone there--you have no connection.
Lightly Rooted: You know a smattering of people and have had a few memorable experiances in your area, but it's not a very strong connection.
Moderately Rooted: You have some connection to your area, you might have friends or family members in the area as well as many memories. You feel that your area is in some way a part of you.
Highly Rooted: You can drive or walk the square miles around your area and point out memory after memory, point out houses of people you know or used to live there, point out resturants and parks you have fond memories of, comment how different things are from when you were a kid.
Extremely Rooted: Take everything from Highly Rooted, but add that your family has been in the area for at least a generation, you have parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, neices, nephues, and cousins living just a few miles away. You might have gone to the same schools as your parents, played in the same places. There are/were people around who knew your father/mother when they were growing up. Every ten feet there is a story or a memory.
I'm moderately rooted in the DFW area. I'd move back to NoVA if the right opportunity came along, I feel enough of my family is based in Texas now that it will always be home and I could come back. I miss the culture, hills, trees, and snowfalls of metro DC.
Location: New Albany, Indiana (Greater Louisville)
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To me this a State vs County question
My mom's side moved to Casey County KY after receiving a huge land grant as reward for service in the Revolutionary War. One of my direct ancestors was the first school teacher in the county. My grandparents lived on land (a few miles away) that had been in the family since the Civil War.
I lived there as a child, but that said, you couldn't pay to move back. There are simply no jobs or anything to do. I am still a proud Kentuckian and have no plans to leave this state.
Back in my hometown after a long absence. Extremely rooted here. I can take my kids to their Great-Great-Great Grandparents graves, as well as every generation since then. Been in this little town for 140+ years so there are family ties everywhere you turn. Roads, buildings, portions of town, etc... all carry the family name. Kind of neat really. Didn't know how much I missed the place until we took a vacation here a few years ago so my kids could see the area I lived as a kid. Wife and sons fell in love with the place and now we are back to stay. Just had a friend and his family over that I have known 40 years now, and I have to stop and visit his Parents this coming week.
Interesting that you don't deal so much with the question of how strong an attachment the person feels, how difficult it would be to leave the area. You specify connections to the area more than emotional ties. Nothing wrong with that. I'm thinking, though, that it could also be interesting to look at emotional ties. Or to look at both kinds of connections and get some idea of how much effect objective connections seem to have on the degree of emotional attachment.
I went with number nine. I debated between nine and eight. It would not be ten, because there are not many different branches of the family living in the area. It's just my father, my sisters and I, and various spouses and offspring. Still, that makes three generations of my family now living within a few towns of each other in the suburbs west of Boston. I have nephews who have gone to the same schools I went to. It's tricky, because I have not spent my whole life in this area. I was born elsewhere, and lived three other places before my family moved to the Boston area when I was a young child, and I've had a couple of stretches of living other places in adulthood. In some ways, I don't have deep roots in the area, not having been born here, with no previous generations of my family growing up here, but with three generations of the family now established in the area, the roots are at least firmly in place. There are opposing forces at work here.
Location: Concrete jungle where dreams are made of.
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My family came to NYC back in the 1800s and stayed, so it goes back generations. We started moving to the suburbs on Long Island about 20 years ago, but it's still the NYC area. Still lots of family left in the city limits anyway. I know it very well around here too. I didn't see the descriptions of the roots, so I chose highly rooted. I'd probably be extremely rooted though.
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. My friend would be a 9.
