I talked my first experience with my wife having seizures in my previous post. She didn’t have any issues until the end of that year as we prepared to visit my mother-in-law in San Antonio. My wife and I had planned to travel with her brother and his wife to Little Rock, Arkansas on New Year’s Eve. We had booked a flight from there to San Antonio early on New Year’s Day.
I spent some time with my family this past weekend and we talked about my previous post about the 1982 World’s Fair. As we talked about the trip, we started talking about another notable meal that we ate during this trip.
The 1982 World’s Fair was held in Knoxville, Tennessee. Knoxville is about a 5-hour drive from where we lived at the time. Our family decided to go to the fair for our summer vacation. My wife and I were dating at the time and my family invited her to go on the trip. My sister invited one of her friends to go on the trip too. The six of us traveled to Knoxville for the fair. One of my cousins was in veterinarian school in Knoxville at the time. We stayed with him and his wife and they acted as our tour guides while we were at the fair.
Several years ago, my family were on vacation. We decided to stop at a Bob Evans restaurant for breakfast. We don’t have any Bob Evans restaurants very close to where we live and my family had never been to one before. I had eaten at one during my work travel and had an idea of the type of food you could get there. There was a Bob Evans close to where we were staying one night and I recommended it when my wife said she wanted breakfast. Everyone was satisfied with everything we had except for my wife. She didn’t like the coffee. She assumed that it was just a bad batch of coffee. We didn’t really think that much of it at the time.
On June 2, 2016, my son turned 21. I decided to take him on a trip to the Kentucky Bourbon Trail to celebrate his birthday. At the time, The Kentucky Bourbon Trail included visits to the facilities of 8 bourbon manufacturers in Kentucky. Three of the manufacturers had two facilities that you can visit so a complete tour included 11 stops. There are tours and tastings at all of these stops. We did everything at all of the stops except for the Jim Beam facility in downtown Louisville. The main thing that they had going on at that stop were just tastings. We arrived there late on our first day of the trip with plans to eat a meal and celebrate my son’s birthday in the 4th Street district in downtown Louisville where this facility is located. We moved to the celebration after walking through that shop.
My family and I were at the public beach in Panama City. I was on an inflatable raft and had made my way out to a sandbar. While I was there, I saw my mom come out to the sandbar too. I thought it was odd that she was there without an inflatable raft. Any other time I had seen here on the sandbar, she was on a raft. As she approached I shouted to her saying “How did you get out here?” She seemed confused and didn’t seem to understand what I was saying. She asked what I said as she got closer. I asked the question again and she replied that she swam out there. That’s when I realized that this was not my mom. It didn’t sound like her. I am very nearsighted and didn’t have any glasses. But as she got closer I realized that she didn’t really look that much like my mom. She was nice lady and I ended up talking to her for a while but I would never have said anything to her if I knew it was someone else.
My sister and I were both in elementary school when we took our first Florida vacation. I’m not sure how old we were. Panama City was our destination. We packed the family station wagon with a tent and traveled all day. I’m not sure how early we started our trip and I think we got lost on the way there, but it was very late and we had not arrived. Everyone in the car had fallen asleep except for my dad and he finally got to a point where he could not stay awake any longer. He finally pulled the car over to the side of the road not really knowing where we were.
Our family was on vacation visiting an area of Middle Tennessee where we lived for about three years. This was about a year or two after we had moved back to West Tennessee and our kids were still really young. At the time our youngest daughter, Mary, was probably about 4 years old. When we lived in that area, we had discovered a winery called Highland Manor. It is the oldest winery in Tennessee. We found a couple of their wines that we really liked and planned to stop there any time we were in the area.
When I was a kid, my family would take vacations to Panama City Beach. I think it was right before the second trip that our family bought a new station wagon. This vehicle featured an 8-track tape player, something that our family never had before in the house or in a car. For what I would imagine was at least a ten hour trip, our family had 3 tapes. Each tape lasted about 45 minutes at best. One was from a local gospel group called The Jones Family that we knew personally. There was also a recent hits compilation like the K-Tel releases. This particular tape was a K-Tel type knock-off, poorly put together and probably no royalties going to the artists or original record companies. It included two songs I specifically remember that were big hits at the time, Maria Muldaur’s “Midnight at the Oasis” and Ray Stevens’ “The Streak”. This 8-track was a loaner from some of our neighbors. The third tape that we had was another loaner called “Jerry Lee Lewis Sings Country Music Hall of Fame Hits Volume 2”.