Among my fellow GIs of the Second World War was an idea that enjoyed almost complete universality. The idea was to win the war, bid farewell to the United States Army, and go home. The GIs of World War II came from every walk of life and from every corner of the United States. But nearly every one of us looked forward to the day when we could go home. And so it might be fair to contend that this essay has been 67 years in gestation. After a pregnancy of that length of time, even the author will be interested in the results, which might surprise all of us, including me.
World War II ended in 1945, which made it possible for the GIs to return to their physical homes. But preachers and metaphysicians have other ideas about going home. A good many of them seem to believe that going home involves a trip to the skies where they will be welcomed into Heaven by Jesus. For example, the Reverend John Newton (1725 – 1807, giving him a life span of 82 years), who wrote the words to “Amazing Grace,” included these lines in the third verse:

Through many dangers, toils, and snares,
I have already come.
‘Tis Grace that hath brought me safe thus far
And Grace will lead me home.

Reverend Newton was an Anglican who formerly was the captain of a sailing ship that transported slaves from Africa to America and Arab ports. It would be my contention that Reverend Newton would have one hell of a lot of explaining to do to Jesus to justify what he had done in the slave trade.
There are many authors and composers who make reference to going home, meaning presumably to Heaven and the eternal life. One of them was Antonin Dvorak, a Czech who lived from 1841 until 1904. Dvorak wrote a beautiful symphonic composition called “Largo” from The New World Symphony. In the American version, it is also known as “Going Home”. The lyrics are by a fellow named Henry Armstrong. My abridgement of the lyrics goes like this:

Going home, going home,
I’m just going home.
It’s not far, just close by,
Through an open door.

So you see, at the early stages of this essay the author has embraced a Czech composer and an English preacher as well as my fellow GIs who just wanted to go home to continue their earthly pursuits.
From this point on, the essay will consist primarily of notes that I have made in preparation for writing this essay on going home. Please don’t try to find a continuity of thought, as these are individual notes about going home. They are intended to convey the importance of that thought, as opposed to a pattern of argument that leads to a logical conclusion. So here are my thoughts about going home.
 
When I was a child, my mother used to make a sandwich for me and put it in a brown paper bag which I carried to school. This of course was during the Great Depression of 1929. The other children in this affluent school thought that this was funny. A good many of them lived within walking distance of the school and those who lived further out were given money to go to the cafeteria. I had none of those advantages. And so there was a time when I rode my bicycle home for lunch and then back to the school, a six-mile round trip. But winter weather put an end to going home for lunch, and soon I was back to the brown paper bag.
 
A second thought about going home has to do with athletic competition. Every athletic team believes that there is an advantage to playing a contest on the home field. Playing another school or team is called an “away game.” So going home, aside from preachers and symphonic composers, also has to do with athletics.
It is alleged that baseball is America’s national game. If that is true, and I believe it is, we find that results are measured in the number of times a team crosses the home base or the home plate. There are four bases in baseball but what really counts is going home to score a run. So much for athletic competition.
 
Let us again return to the military. As everyone knows, the military operates from various bases. The base could be an aircraft carrier at sea or it could be an airfield in some far off place. But no matter how you cut it, going back to the base was the objective of every flyer known to me. I suspect that in Iraq or Afghanistan, going back to an established base is the objective of the modern-day GIs, and I can appreciate their wanting to go home to such a base.
 
The phrase “going home” is not confined to English. In Spanish and Italian, the phrase is “casa mia,” which means my house. I suspect that every language has such a phrase. And I suspect that the words “going home” are a welcome thought in every case.
Then we find love songs and patriotic songs that convey the idea of going home in both cases. For example, in the Irish lexicon, there is a song called “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.” On the other side of the coin in romantic relations, we find that if a date goes sour, the female may say, “I want to go home now.” Of course, readers of Ezra’s Essays have never had this happen to them.
 
To return again to the sports field, in recent years nearly every professional sport has added a system of playoffs. When a team is defeated in the playoffs, there is nothing left to do but for that team to go home. I suspect that every sports team dreads the idea of a loss which would cause them to go home.
For those with disabilities, there are homes such as nursing homes. For the able bodied to go home to a nursing home might not be an enticing proposition, but for the disabled, going home to a nursing home might be the only choice available.
The Clayton, Missouri public schools that I attended were death on tardiness. If a student had three or four tardinesses, he might be told to go home instead of attending class. Such tardiness probably affected his grade.
 
Once again, to return to the field of singing, the idea of home or going home appears in many compositions. One of them is “Home on the Range.” Then, one of the tear jerkers is “Home is Where the Heart is.” In “Home on the Range,” there is a poignant thought. It says that:

Home, home on the range,
Where the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day.

I expect that the lyricist had to reach for that last line.
 
Then we have the case of being “home sick.” For Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Republicans in the Senate, there is “My Old Kentucky Home.” Speaking of politics, in the 2008 election, the Republicans were sent home from Washington in droves. Perhaps they got a warmer reception at home than they would have in Washington.
Again, on the political front, I find that in 2004 John Kerry, because of his marriage to the widow of the Heinz fortune, had five homes. The farmer in Iowa, for example, might not have found this very amusing. But in the 2008 election, we found that John McCain had confusion about whether he owned seven homes or eleven homes. It completely baffles me about why people need more than one or even two homes. A fellow I worked with wound up owning a home in the Poconos and another on the east coast of the United States. He always contended that, whenever he needed an important piece of paper, it was in the other home. But I am baffled by the thought that when a person is told to go home, which home does he choose?
On the subject of home ownership, I wonder why citizens wish to take on the ownership of more than one home with factors such as roof leaks, pipes collapsing, grass to be cut, and snow to be shoveled. But lots of people wish to own more than one home, and I wish them well. On the other hand, I might observe that when a divorce occurs, even in a single-ownership home, the person who remains in the home might wind up buying his own home twice. But if the choice is between buying your own home twice and/or sleeping in the car, I would say buy the home.
Tom Paxton is a folk singer who is now snuggling up fairly close to age eighty. In one of his songs, Paxton has a line which says that home is a place “where they have to let you in.” In another case, Tom Paxton has written that “home is anywhere you are.” All of this may be true, but if the GIs at the end of the Second World War were headed home they might have a degree of confusion if “home is anywhere you are.”
 
Well, so much for my thoughts about “going home.” It took 67 years for these ideas about going home to eventually produce a small essay. It is my hope that this essay has demonstrated the intensity of thoughts that GIs have about going home and I would suggest that other people have those kinds of thoughts as well.
As for going home to Jesus, I am going to take a pass on that question. All I can say is that Lillie Carr, my mother, sang or hummed “Amazing Grace” each day during my life time. She also said that she couldn’t wait to “go home to Jesus.” But when her final illness struck her, she fought valiantly to stay here with us earthlings. Given a choice, I would like to stay with my fellow earthlings for a while longer, even though I know that my life is in its extra innings. I am at home at 500 Long Hill Drive, and going home to some other place at this late date does not interest me.
But I will sing a verse or two of John Newton’s song about “Amazing Grace” where he said, “Grace has brought me safe thus far and grace will lead me home.” I leave you with the thought that I hope celestial grace extends also to John Newton for his involvement with the slave trade. But what can I say? He was an Anglican preacher and the head man doesn’t make many of those kinds of creatures.
E. E. CARR
June 14, 2009
Essay 390
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Kevin’s commentary: I was reading about the slave-trading reverend, the idea of “going home” and how that implies that you were there before you were born (why can’t you remember it?) and a few other phrases in the essay made me immediately remember a very short story I read recently called The Egg. You should check it out; I think it asks a very interesting question.
On going home for lunches and brown paper bags: in my experience, the food that mom made could usually rival or best what was available in the cafeterias. Hopefully, Pop, you weren’t missing out on much.
On multiple homes: I think that you’re not fully an adult until your “home” and “the place your parents live” are two different things. By this standard, I’m not fully an adult yet. If someone calls and asks if I’m home, and I’m at my residence in San Francisco, I will say yes. However I have only been living here about six months, and I’ve moved around four times in the last eighteen months alone that I’m loath to say that I have a “home” out here. I have plenty of places that I inhabit, but in my mind “home” is synonymous with my childhood home in Austin. Perhaps if I got a nicer apartment, or got married or something, that would change, but it hasn’t yet.
So there’s that.
As a final note, readers who enjoyed this essay might also like “The Doctrine of Up,” which is done in a similar style.