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. *
My stepfather grew up in a Chicago ghetto, so I find it amusing that “Home on the Range” is one of the only two songs he sings when he's doing the sorts of homey tasks that are usually accompanied by absent humming. (The other is “Stout-Hearted Men”.)
If home is a feeling, as well as a place, it's also embodied in specific people. It took the better part of 20 years for it to happen, but my stepfather is now one of the people I am truly “at home” with.
Where once I associated “Home on the Range” with the flat part of Colorado (because that's where I first learned it), now the association is with Ira.
*”Home on the Range,” traditional