The Thanksgiving holiday is right around the corner, and airline industry analysts expect more than 24-and-a-half million people will take a plane in the 21 day period between November 21 and December 2. That’s an increase of more than 31,000 people per day over last year. The reason is simple: people are headed “home,” which is now further away than it used to be in the Boomer Era.
Thanksgiving is the most quintessential of American holidays, and, as boomers can attest, has always meant spending time with family. It’s the most homogenous of the holidays, with turkey and all the trimmings, though the trimmings can vary slightly by region and ethnic origin. One thing hasn’t changed, and that is, it celebrates “home,” wherever that may be. At the turn of the century, over the river and through the woods was the way to grandmother’s house. By the end of the Baby Boom in 1964, the U.S. highway system meant travel by car was much easier than previous decades. The highway system had given a boost to the migration of people away from small towns and rural communities, which began in the 1950s.
The move from small communities was precipitated by a variety of factors. Soldiers returning home from the War had been subjected to stories of other places and future opportunities that stirred their imagination and wanderlust; employment was more plentiful in larger communities; returning soldiers may have married someone from a different region; the new national highway system and car travel expanded suburbs and locations that could be away but still within one day’s drive for burgeoning boomer families; and, as boomers themselves aged and became college students, life in another state was a real possibility.
After two decades of boomer families migrating away from small towns, there was a slight uptick of people moving back to those communities in the 1970s as the aging parents of boomers retired, but that quickly changed in the 1980s. Overall, in the period between 1950 and 2000, there has been a significant loss of 20 to 29 year olds in small town populations. Today only 37 percent of people continue to live in the hometown area in which they were raised. Plus, college graduates are more likely to have lived in multiple states than at any other time in history. That translates into more trips over Thanksgiving as boomers and now the children of boomers travel.
Nonetheless, for most boomers in the core boomer years of 1945 to 1964, “home” remained within a day’s drive from the place from which they were born. In Mister Boomer’s case, all of his aunts, uncles and cousins lived within a hour’s drive of each other. Many lived in the same city. Like many boomers, it was a move out of an urban environment to expanding suburbs during the Baby Boom for Mister B’s parents. As a result, Mister B’s suburb was literally on the edge of suburbia-meets-farmland. There was a working farm directly behind the row of houses across the street from Mister B’s childhood home until the early 1960s, when the land was parceled up and new homes were built. Getting grandparents and extended family together for Thanksgiving was a short freeway drive away.
Unlike a lot of movies and nightmare stories some people have of family gatherings, Thanksgiving for Mister B was a great American holiday designed for stuffing one’s self to the gills, even if it meant sitting at the kids’ table. (See: Boomers Had a Different Thanksgiving).
How far will you travel this Thanksgiving, boomers? Or is your family traveling back to you?