After many adventures – some of them perilous – in the Land of Oz, Dorothy was enabled to return to her home in Kansas by the magic of the ruby slippers. Over time, there have been multitudes of people from rural places who would have welcomed some ruby slippers because, like Dorothy, they knew that there is no place like home.

Wars have displaced millions of people through military service and wartime manufacturing. Their letters to family, sweethearts and friends reflect the estrangement that is sometimes called homesickness. Others have been forced to leave the land by economic disasters, of which the Great Depression is the worst and most dramatic. The lure of “greener grass” elsewhere moved many, some of whom found the grass not so green and separation from the security of home a heavy cost for bad decisions.

It is far too simplistic to think of home as place, a house that can be pinpointed on a map. Home as the house where the old folks live is central, of course, but it is more the people who enliven that place. Both sets of my grandparents lived in places that were surrounded by offspring, siblings, cousins and other kin. They visited often, worked together, feasted together, grieved together, celebrated weddings and births and gathered at gravesides for funerals.

Home became part of the minds and hearts of children growing up in such encompassing social networks. We knew that we could always find love, acceptance, security and support among at least some, if not all, of those who were part of home.

Such networks often extended past usual kinship ties to include community systems and their institutions, such as churches. One reflection is the question, “What is your home church?” Many rural and village churches celebrate “homecoming” every year with members and former members gathering for singing, preaching and dinner on the grounds.

Home was a bigger part of life for some families than for others. It was very big in my Branch clan. My father’s oldest brother, Ira, had to find work in the citrus groves of central Florida during the Great Depression, but regularly returned home during the “off-season” until New Deal programs enabled him to resume farming. Uncle Ray lived and worked as a barber in Savannah, but “came home” nearly every weekend. The house was often crowded, especially on Sundays when most or all of the family showed up for “Sunday dinner” at midday. Prudent chickens tried to hide. The homeplace and the house where I grew up were less than a mile apart, an easy stroll for Daddy, who visited his mother every day until her death.

I certainly had home at the core of my being and suffered serious homesickness when I “went off to college” at the University of Georgia. I had never before been away from the house on the hill where I grew up for more than a week. I ate the goodies from Momma as if they were holy sacrament. By the next year, Annette was at the center of my life and I hurried back to south Georgia whenever possible. After we were married, home became wherever I was living with her and we had extended home ties through both of our families.

The centrality of home in rural culture is reflected in religious beliefs. Some think of heaven as an extension of home. In obituaries, death is sometimes referred to as homegoing. A deceased person is often said to be joining a predeceased spouse or many family members. One gospel song goes, “Coming home, coming home, Lord, I’m coming home.” For some, apparently the welcoming vista of home is more appealing than the visions of material perfection in the apocalypse (unveiling, revelation).

Since place is so central to home, I have to wonder about how this conceptual and emotional reality fits among the landless. For half of my life, share-cropping was a common approach to tenancy. The landowner furnished a house, access to land, run-bill for crop costs and the cropper family did the work. Depending on various factors, at the end of the crop year, any profits were divided. There were dishonest landlords. Crops failed. Few share-croppers ever worked their way out of poverty. They moved often and never to a place of their own.

How could home in any meaningful sense become living reality for them? In fact, for many, it never happened. And without that foundation, family bonds were fragile.

However, among my friends who grew up share-cropping, most understand home in the same way as I do. This happened because of strong mothers who embodied the essence of family, provided the sinews of connectedness and security. They turned every new living place into a home, if only for a year or two.

Roger G. Branch Sr. is professor emeritus of sociology at Georgia Southern University and is a retired pastor.