Blog-in-Progress (BiP): ♫Sweet Home Chicago♫

Featured Photo: “Portrait of Me – About 6 Months Old”  Natchitoches, Louisiana—1959

I’ve called lots of places “home” over my 67 years. My father’s work as a Presbyterian minister took the family to several towns and states when I was growing up. Later on, my education and career choices led me to destinations farther afield. And along the way, I made several life-long friends. But if you’ll indulge me, I’ll start at the beginning.

I was born in 1958 in northwest Louisiana (which many locals pronounce: loo’-zee-anna). More specifically, in Natchitoches (pronounced: nak’-ə-tish, and not to be confused with its sister city in Texas, spelled Nacogdoches and pronounced nak’-ə-doh’-chis). Both cities were named after the same tribe of indigenous people. I can’t explain the different spellings or pronunciations. Not that any of that is terribly relevant.

Natchitoches was my first home, and that of my brother (who was also my first life-long friend), born 2-1/2 years before me. Surprisingly, the town is better known as the oldest permanent settlement in the Louisiana Purchase, with a historic downtown featuring French Creole architecture and food, and its popular Christmas Festival of Lights held annually. But I have no memories of the place. My father had moved to Natchitoches with my mom and their two young daughters when he got the call to serve his third church after graduating from seminary. Before I turned one, my parents took me to a department store to pose for my first formal portrait—today’s Featured Photo. Before I turned two, my dad was called to his next church.

West Monroe—also in Louisiana—was my second home and I do have memories from there.

I began my education in West Monroe, graduating kindergarten…

…and completing first and second grade. In the middle of third grade, I was again uprooted when my family moved to the small town of Malvern, in the foreign state of Arkansas, where I finished third grade, as well as fourth, fifth, and sixth.

It was there I tried playing several sports, including baseball…

…and football. I was not very good at either.

In 1970 when I was 11 years old, we moved to Memphis, Tennessee where I lived for 10 years.

It was in Memphis I got my first camera, and my love of photography began. It was also there my decades-long-and-still-going-strong passion for music was sparked. As for school, I finished grades 7-9 at a Junior High about a mile from our house. For grades 10-12, I was bused to a High School nearly 10 miles away, graduating in America’s bicentennial year. I made a couple of life-long friends in high school…

…and helped create the school’s first tennis team.

I had a pretty good serve!

While living in Memphis, I enrolled at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

Although never officially residing in San Antonio, I still consider it an adopted home-away-from-home, since I lived in the dorm for nine months each of the four years I was there. I’d hoped to play on Trinity’s outstanding tennis team, but I wasn’t that good. Instead, I earned a degree in Chemistry and found a few more life-long friends, many of whom I’ve had the good fortune to reconnect with over the 45 years since we graduated.

Following college, I traded the hot weather of Texas for the frigid climes of Wisconsin to attend graduate school. I had no idea what cold was! Although I started in a Ph.D. program in Chemistry—expected to take half a decade—I escaped Madison after just two years with a Master’s degree, for fear I might freeze to death. While there, I lived alone in an efficiency apartment for my first year, then shared a rental house with three other chem grads the second.

I got my first job with Merck, the pharmaceutical giant, at their research and manufacturing site near Philadelphia. During my 30+ year career with the company, I’ve lived in seven separate Pennsylvania towns scattered in a circle with a 20-mile radius. I first rented a condominium in Blue Bell, then the upper half of a house in Rockledge, the lower half of a different house in North Wales, and eventually bought a home in Perkasie.

But my career did not progress uninterrupted, as I wrote in an introductory post. Six years after starting at Merck, I left to have another go at graduate school—this time at Purdue—renting an apartment in West Lafayette, Indiana. I lasted there only a year. I took a position teaching chemistry at a two-year college about 50 miles south of Atlanta. While in Georgia, I rented an apartment in Griffin for a year…

…then rented a small house belonging to a fellow teacher out in the woods near Meansville. At Gordon College, I made a few more life-long friends.

I left Gordon and briefly returned to Merck, renting an apartment in Narberth on Philly’s Main Line. Then I moved to another job with a different drug company in my old hometown of Memphis. I leased an incredible two-story downtown apartment, near historic Beale Street, home of B.B. King’s Blues Club. I could look out the 17th-floor windows, over the mighty Mississippi River as the weather rolled across Arkansas into Memphis. (Wish I could find those pictures!) I later rented a house in Bartlett with a swimming pool I had to tend; I’ll never do that again! While in Bartlett, I met my wife and we moved into a condo in midtown Memphis.

I left that job and we moved back to Pennsylvania, where I rejoined Merck to finish my career. We initially rented an apartment in Narberth, but on the other side of the SEPTA commuter line from where I’d lived before. When we started our family, we bought a house in Glenside.

When it was time for our boys to start school, we bought a house in Dresher.

And that’s where my wife and I still live today. Our boys have moved away. Oh, and a few years before retiring from Merck, I made another life-long friend.

So, how many homes is that? Counting each apartment and house, that makes 20—or 21 if you allow San Antonio. But I’ve never lived in Chicago. So, you’re probably asking: what does my list of homes have to do with the title of this post?

Well, it’s a bit of a stretch: I was recently writing a series of posts about a trip I took to Chicago in January 2025, in which the Blues play a feature role. My mind wandered to the classic tune “Sweet Home Chicago”, first recorded in 1936 by the legendary Blues musician Robert Johnson. (You can listen if you click the link.) And that led me down the rabbit-hole of recalling all the places I’ve lived.

So, Chicago has never really been my sweet home. But after half-a-dozen visits over several years, I’ve certainly enjoyed the treasures the Windy City has to offer. And with my younger son moving to Chicago after college, I must say it feels a bit like home to me now.

(Stay tuned. More to come in a few weeks…)

P.S. In addition to the fun challenge of trying to remember all the places I’ve lived, I leave this post as a tribute to my life-long friends (including a few not shown in the photos) and as a bit of personal history—which I’d not previously detailed—for my sons.