A Letter to My Hometown...

 Dear Sun Prairie, Wisconsin

It has been said that your hometown is the forge out of which the person you are today was made. I find I struggle with that sentiment, and probably always will. My relationship with you, my “hometown” is, as Facebook might describe it… “complicated”. So, I thought it’s a good time to clear the air about a few things.

For years, I dreaded coming back to visit you. Did everything I could to avoid it even, and as a result felt really guilty about it. Why? That’s what’s complicated.

For the past couple weeks I have been back visiting. (There hasn’t been time  time to see friends this trip and I apologize for that.) The purpose of the visit was to spend time with my Parents. My Mom and Dad now live in a senior living community on the far East side of Madison,  just down the road from you, and are both in their mid 80’s.

One of the primary motivations for moving back the United States eight years ago, was to be closer to them. Having a number of lifelong  friends  who recently have lost one or both of their parents, I am keenly aware that I have fewer days ahead with them than there are behind.

So now instead of being 4,000 miles and a 9-hour flight away in London, or 2,000 miles and a 6 hour flight  way in San Francisco,  I am now 940  miles and a 2-hour flight away in New York City.

But returning to Dane County is always an odd experience for me. It’s like one of those Science Fiction movies where someone travels in time then gets back to the present and starts to notice how the timeline was changed. 

Things are mostly familiar, but there a few glaring differences that make it clear that the place you returned to, is not the same place you left.

The thing you notice right off the bat, is how Sun Prairie is just so much BIGGER. Growing up here in the 70’s and 80’s there were  5 elementary schools, one Jr. High School and one High school. Now there are ten elementary schools, three middle schools, TWO high schools and two… of whatever Phoenix Academy and the Sun Prairie Virtual School are.

On a previous  trip back here in 2022, the front page of the Wisconsin State Journal sports section had  a full-page story on the first ever football game  between the  Sun Prairie East Cardinals and the Sun Prairie West, Wolves.  A game that was played not just on Ashley Field, but rather AT Ashley Field IN the Bank of Sun Prairie Stadium.

My family moved to Sun Prairie when I was in first grade. I went from Pier Elementary School in Fond Du Lac, to Northside Elementary in the fall of that year. I remember at the time, thinking how, Sun Prairie with its proximity to Madison felt like a real “city” compared to tiny, small town Fond Du Lac.

In time, however, that feeling would wear off.

I have said my relationship with Sun Prairie is a complicated one, and that is very true. But let me be clear, I feel very lucky to have grown up here. It was a wonderfully safe, and yes for the most part, fun place to be from.   Sun Prairie Public Schools, while certainly not perfect, were better than most and gave me a well-rounded education that has served me  in life. I had and continue to have amazing and wonderful friends here. Friends who played a huge role in my becoming the person I am today.

Sun Prairie, Wisconsin is and will always be my ‘hometown’. It is where I am from.

But…

One of the nice things about getting older is that old friends can be honest with each other. So here goes...

I am from here, but I have never ever felt like I belonged here.

Growing up here was living in a place that made it very clear, that … “noticeable individuality” was something that would make your life difficult. It's safe to say that "back in the day" I was not someone who was in with the "cool kids". My varsity letter (yes, I have one) was in Extemporaneous Speech. (Yeah, I know... you actually can letter in that, who knew?) So, I didn't fit in very well. I was an awkward kid with mild stutter, who wasn’t interested in sports, had a graduate school level vocabulary and interests that greatly differed from most of my classmates.

And for better or worse, back in the early 1980’s,  Sun Prairie was  not a place that smiled upon being "different". As a result, even as a young child, it became clear that I would always, to a certain extent, be on the outside looking in. Consequently, coming back here is an emotionally mixed experience.

Don't get me wrong, I had (and still have) amazing friends and great memories. Yet it really was a whole different life. Growing up here as a gay kid was pretty much a daily exercise in terror. The ultimate put-down was to say something was "gay" or to be called a "fag". And you  saw kids who were even slightly effeminate or "different" getting tormented on a daily basis.

There was no such thing a Gay-Straight alliances, or “Safe Spaces” for LGBT youth. Back in High School,   when I was one of the editors of the Cardinal Courier, the school newspaper an organization called “The United” , (a groundbreaking nonprofit support and counseling organization that served Gay and Lesbian teens in South Central Wisconsin) contacted us. They wanted to buy an ad in the paper advertising their crisis counseling phone  line for Gay teens. The reaction was… stark.

Teachers and classmates that I had thought would be somewhat progressive were suddenly “seriously concerned”, angry even that we might be “promoting the homosexual lifestyle”, and even potentially pushing some poor confused soul into it, just by running an ad for a crisis counseling hotline.

The experience taught me a very clear lesson. Mainly that Sun Prairie, while not a bad place to grow up, would be a very dangerous place to be grown up.

There would never be a first date, a dance or a kiss stolen at a locker in between classes. To even attempt such a thing would be suicide. Literally.

Thankfully one of the “alternate timeline” changes you notice coming back here is the daily reality for a gay kid at Sun Prairie East is, (at least to a certain extent I think) far better today.  Yet, I will confess, even now decades later, driving around town is an exercise in both wonderful nostalgia and mild PTSD.

So, my dear Sun Prairie… I now regularly come back. As much as I would have liked my Parents to have moved out to California to be with me and my husband, and my sister and her family. The aftermath of the Covid pandemic made that big  of a move, too difficult for them.  

So,  I am resigned to the fact that they will always live  here in Dane County. So, I will continue to come back.  Often even,  and  I am happy to do so.

I am grateful to be able to say  that I am from here.  But I am also able to make peace with that fact that I did not, still do not,  and never will,  belong here.

Not a bad thing, just the truth.

Go Cardinals… I hope you beat the Wolves.

Love,

Dave