Reporter's Notebook: A portrait of Middletown, Ohio, home to JD Vance

"Like most small children, I learned my home address so that if I got lost, I could tell a grown-up where to take me."

Those are the opening lines to "Hillbilly Elegy," the memoir by Republican Vice Presidential nominee and Sen. JD Vance. It documents his rocky childhood growing up in Jackson, Kentucky, and Middletown, Ohio.

Like Vance, I, too, learned my address for the same reasons. In fact, the geography is pretty similar. I was born in Middletown, just like Vance. But I was raised just west of there.