Bro and I have sort of adopted [REDACTED] as our “Hometown” even though that’s not technically true. Most of our formative years were spent in a far more remote little burg in Kentucky.
Our “true” Hometown is an incredibly rural location, with just a few thousand residents. For decades, it has featured forest preserves, massive caverns, and unforgettable scenic vistas as its calling cards. These days it is mostly known for a sizeable meth and painkiller problem, and grinding poverty and hopelessness.
My Mother’s family was originally from there, but Dad was originally from the larger town of [REDACTED]. For some reason, when my Uncle founded his church, he felt “led” to set up his Ministry in the former small county and, since we attended there, we lived there as well. As soon as me and Brother were born, we were taken to a small trailer park there. We spent several years there until Mom got a teaching job in Tennessee.
We lived always within a 30 minute drive of this county at least until I was 12 years old. If anything, the capitol should probably really be considered our “Hometown.” It’s where all of our childhood friends were. We were always visiting there, the home of one large, prominent family particularly. The pater familias and the mother had four daughters..
I’ve detailed the peculiarities of my Uncle’s church in previous entries, so I won’t go into them again here. For a long time, however, his Church was held at this prominent family’s house, first in his basement and later, in his garage. I distinctly remember being let out of long Church services to galivant around the yard with the rest of the kids our age and one of the family’s adopted son, who was much older but still liked to hang out with us.
This adopted son was always getting into trouble. He wanted nothing more than to join the Marines — he considered it his highest purpose in life. I remember his small basement room had Military posters all over the walls. But alas, he was discovered to have a heart murmur and was his life’s dream was denied. After finding him on Facebook, I discovered he has settled into a life of Law Enforcement. A fitting lifestyle for one with former Military aspirations.
I remember one of the middle daughters was the one who clued me in about all the ways women’s health is different from men’s just as I entered puberty. Dad scolded us after that, as if he would ever give us any useful information, telling us we shouldn’t be talking about such subjects with a girl our age in her bedroom. She was a little older than us, but whatever. Fucker probably just feared that somebody would find out about his own creepy ass.
We did have another small pair of brothers as our peers as well. Their parents had divorced at a very young age, leaving them to be raised by their mother. The problem was, their mother was a bit of a bleeding heart. She would not discipline them at all. When they behaved like hellions, she mostly just asked nicely for them to stop, and they would ignore her.
When I lived in that tiny little county on the edge of nowhere, [REDACTED] seemed like an impossibly huge city. They had a Shopping Mall, for goodness’ sakes! With a real Video Arcade! That had more than two Arcade mMachines! It was intimidatingly huge. Once we moved to [REDACTED] however, and started attending Saint Academy, we left that place behind. It was too small and depressing.
Then Lexington seemed like the impossibly huge city with its skyscrapers and downtown areas. Then we moved to Lexington, and we left [REDACTED] behind. Once again, it was too small and depressing. The few times I have visited a truly large city like Chicago I have been intimidated by its size. Perhaps one day, if I ever move there, I’ll start to feel that Lexington is small and depressing, too.