I always make it a point to travel down some of my favorite backroads when I'm stopping through my hometown. That place isn't much to write home about. Just an old Kentucky coal town along the Green River. It's dried up a few times, but has always stayed the same. I couldn't wait to get out of that town as a kid, but we were able to pass the time that we had been sentenced on her waters. It made growing up somewhat bearable.
I can't recall a summer in my life when I didn't see this little building that sits just off the banks of the river where I cut my teeth. Every summer when school would let out, the river would open her welcoming arms to teach us things about life that a public education just couldn't. I once swam across her widest bend and nearly drowned just to prove I was a man, Randy Owen style. Over a lifetime of summers that river taught us a little about the fairer sex, a lot about our outlaw country heroes, and showed us that a cold beer tastes best on a hot summer day sitting in a bass boat. The river made me who I am. It's funny how the places we once ran from become the places we run to. Thanks, Green River.
