Home for the Holidays

So, I went home for a couple of days to visit the family. It's good to see the folks and great to have my daughters visiting their grandparents. I won't go into great detail about the visit other than to say we still wish we could be closer to home. I would, however, like to share a trip down memory lane as I was driving around town one day.

I grew up in Owensboro, Kentucky. A town of about 70-80 thousand where everybody knows your name and probably knows your father's name, too. Owensboro was recently named the best sports town in Kentucky by Sports Illustrated. It's also the home of Moonlite Bar-B-Q. Notice how I spelled it. Not the way it's spelled in North Carolina, barbeque. Oh, sure, Webster's will most likely spell it the latter, but I kinda like the hyphenated way.

Also on my drive I went past the house I grew up in. We moved into the old brick house when I was three and all I can say is it was a great house, a great neighborhood. My best friend Billy, lived around the corner. We played a lot of basketball in our respective driveways and it was always fun beating him and his little brother in some one-on-two.

Speaking of sports, I cruised past my old high school. Owensboro High School, better known as Owensboro Senior, is where I learned to knock the snot out of whomever lined up across from me on the gridiron. Unfortunately, I never really learned the basics of English. Maybe that's why my blog sometimes goes on forever, with neverending sentences and poor punctuation, you tell me. But, I can tell you I played football with NFL pros Mark Higgs, Kenny Willis, and Vince Buck. We also won a state championship.

While in high school and my first year of college, I worked at the Owensboro Marina. It was the boat dock on the Ohio River. Here I learned from owner Walt Meschko that the customer is always WRONG. That's right. Walt, a cross between Grizly Adams and the homeless man down on the corner, was the antithesis of a successful business owner. He basically ran off anyone who disagreed with him, said something remotely vulger, or just didn't kiss his butt. Don't get me wrong, as a football-playin', testosterone-filled, overzealous teen, I liked nothing more than struttin' my stuff on the dock and telling anyone where they could go. It just didn't set me up real well for what most would consider normal management. None-the-less, I enjoyed my summers wearing flip-flops, cut-off shorts, no shirt and watching the barges go by.

So that's my brief trip down memory lane. I'll not bore you with any more specifics, besides, the wife might be reading since it is the holidays and she's got a little more time than usual. I wouldn't want her reading anything about my high school exploits, right?