It's not his favorite of topics, it's true, but he is the one who brought it up in the first place, so he's not going to deflect. Mostly sticking to publicly-available facts helps, naturally.

"Small town called Riverside," he answers honestly. "Out in rural Iowa, about fifteen miles from the closest big city. It's technically a farm, but we never did any farming ourselves. I'm actually living there again for now - my apartment got destroyed, and since I had another place to go, Starfleet bumped me down the priority list for finding alternate housing." He doesn't fault them for that decision; it makes perfect sense to prioritize those who have nowhere else to stay.

"It's not so bad, though. There's a Starfleet shipyard about ten miles away, and I used to go and watch the ships being built sometimes when I was a kid."