I realized the other day that I love my city. I love my town. I love this area.
I was driving home from St. Luke’s Hospital. Everyone’s fine. I volunteer there once a week.
I’m going through a lot of their old pictures from the past and I’m seeing some faces that I recognize and many that I don’t. They are all people who, I’m sure, have amazing stories of their own. There are doctors, nurses, politicians and many other people that have done things over the years. I even found one of a younger Pete who was interviewing someone at a Health Fair. And there was a younger Jim Phillips doing a story for Channel 13.
As I left, I drove through the city on my way to the highway because I knew the bridge was due to open. I try to avoid that headache when I can. I drove through Buttonwood Park and I thought of all the Can Drives we had there and all the hours we spent working with some terrific volunteers. Getting coffee, hot chocolate and donuts from Sunrise Bakery. And pizza delivered from Nelson at Dominos. We met a lot of people and collected a lot of food.
I drove by the ballfield on the left, the “Sheldon Goodman Memorial Field.” Sheldon was always the first caller, every evening, when I produced the sports talk show “Speak Up On Sports” with Russ Baldwin, Jack Peterson and Bernie Picinisco on WNBH.
After the monument was the softball field on the right where Priscilla and I actually played for the WNBH team. We even had a collision there one night. She was playing catcher and I was at first base when a batter hit a pop up between us. I figured she would get out of my way: she figured I would get out of her way when— boom! I ended up needing Xrays that night while she was fine.
I drove home thinking about the wonderful memories I have of the past 30 or 40 years. I guess this means I’m getting old huh?
Sure there have been some rough times but it seems the good outweighs the bad. I don’t know if it really is that way or if we just seem to remember the good and try to forget the bad.
There was a Facebook post this past week about our local political races and one of the commenters stated that he couldn’t believe the same names were still a part of the picture. I don’t like to blog about politics, local or national, but the thing I thought of when I read that comment was that those names are a huge part of our local character. I can’t count the number of times my path crossed with some of those candidates either scheduling interviews, debates or on election night.
I’m really glad Priscilla and I stayed with our home town for all these years. People in broadcasting tend to move around a lot but I was able to find a good spot as we raised our family. I’m happy to say that I never missed a school concert or a game and our children had stability with the same school system.
Many of the youth I coached and my two oldest children have since moved on to other places and I don’t know what’s in store for my youngest two. I just hope that wherever they land they have a chance to put down some roots and one day have an afternoon like I did this week. Drive home and have a different memory for just about every block you pass.
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