Do any of us have home towns anymore?

Today I attended the funeral of my friend and former neighbor Pat Rizzotto, who lived the last 61 of his 95 years on Fernside Drive in La Canada, California. He was my neighbor for the 16 years I lived at 1234 Fernside, the longest I have ever lived anywhere in my 60 years on Earth.

I spent a large chunk of my childhood living in Huber Heights, Ohio, and my teen years and young adult ones living in Northern Virginia. When I was 32, it was the beginning of a nine-year period in which I lived in seven states from one coast to the other pursuing my career as a journalist.

California has been my home for the last 20 years, the way I always intended it would be. I was born here, and even though I didn't make it back until I was 40, this was where I always wanted to be. I married the love of my life and helped raise two wonderful children here. I coached youth sports here and had a vegetable garden; all very middle class, all very home town stuff.

But it's strange. We may have great memories as adults, but it often seems the memories that really resonate in our souls are the ones we made when we were younger. My best friend in the world lives seven miles away in Pasadena, but most of our best memories are from when we lived two blocks apart in Fairfax, Va. He came to California to strike it rich in the movies, and I came to the Southland instead of San Francisco because he was here.

I swore I could never live in Northern Virginia again -- too many bad memories, particularly of the first marriage -- but most of the people I love in this world either live there or will be there part of the time. My two children will travel the world, but they'll be in the D.C. area every few years for language training or other reasons in their careers as diplomats. And of course that means little Maddie, my wonderful granddaughter, and the other grandchildren who will follow her will be there too.

<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/VA-3551-Washington-03-PIGIL.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-225" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/VA-3551-Washington-03-PIGIL-300x194.jpg" alt="Our future home?" width="300" height="194" /></a>So if I may wax poetic for a moment, I hear Virginia calling me home, and I wonder if it really was my home all along.

We were thinking of retiring to South Carolina or Tennessee, but it looks as if our recent trip east changed our plans. We visited the new Del Webb community outside Fredericksburg, Va., and we liked almost everything we saw. The community is called Celebrate, and it's part of a massive tourism project called Celebrate Virginia.

The houses aren't expensive, at least by California standards. The house we'll probably buy has 1,680 square feet plus a two-car garage, and it's selling for about half a million dollars less than we got for our smaller house on Fernside Drive last year.

You see, my dear friend Pat was right.

Ten years ago or so, we were talking about how ridiculous housing prices had become in California. He told me that back in 1952, three years after he had moved to La Canada, the house next door -- the one my family currently occupied -- had gone on the market when the first owner moved out.

"I wanted to buy it," he said. "I knew it would be a good investment. But they wanted $15,000 for it and I was only making $50 a week."

I envied his roots. Imagine living more than 60 years in the same house. My late grandparents did it in Crestline, Ohio, and my mother has lived in our Virginia home for 47 years this month.

If we move to Fredericksburg later this year, I'll have to live to be 108 to equal that.

But even if I do, I'm not sure I'll ever think of it as my home town.

I will, however, finally accept the fact that Virginia is my home state.