Episode 10: Going Home

On this edition of B-Side from August 2002, stories about going home – what home means, how home feels, and how home can change.

Liner Notes:

O Fallon, Illinois: Judson True
Re porter Judson True recently went back to his suburban origins in O’Fallon, Illinois, just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, Missouri. When he got there, he found his hometown sprouting subdivisions the way it used to grow corn.

Group Home Life: Sarah Richardson
For a lot of people, home isn’t as easily defined as that house on the corner of Main Street and First. It’s hard to figure out exactly what home is when you don’t stay in any one place for more than a few months or even a few weeks. 16-year-old essayist Sarah Richardson doesn’t really have a place she can call home.

Casas San Miguel: Tamara Keith
In the Central California city of Fresno, some unlikely homeowners are experiencing that feeling for the first time. As B-side’s Tamara Keith reports, 32 immigrant farm worker families from an isolated Mexican village just moved in to brand new homes built just for them.

Remembering: Noam Birnbaum
B-side’s Noam Birnbaum grew up just blocks away from the World Trade Center, and though he has since moved away, he still feels a deep connection with the place. In trying to sort out the events of last fall, Noam took his mother on a walk through his old neighborhood to ask some hard questions about her past. But their conversation about remembering quickly turned into one about forgetting.