When the power came back on yesterday, after 3 hours of having nothing do to but read (actual books printed on paper and not blogs or news sites), I turned on my TV to see footage of a flooded Louisville, Kentucky. As I watched footage of 10,000 library books ruined at the main library and cars driving through newly made rivers, I thought “Wow, that’s just like the great flood of ’97!”

As I slowly approach the age of 30, there have been several indicators of the aging process that have nothing to do with grey hairs or the number of pills I pop at night. I can remember when Green Day’s first video played on MTV, and when I do the math I realize that was 15 years ago. The latest milestone I noticed is that I have disaster stories to tell the young kiddies.

In 1997, I lived in Louisville, Kentucky and after I returned home with my family from seeing the special edition release of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, I rushed to […]

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I watched a woman pull into the driveway where I had my first car accident which involved a blue Ford van and a sideview mirror. Then she carried groceries into our old kitchen and I looked through the windows to see they’d had new cabinets installed. I wondered who lived in my old bedroom now, and if the BB gun hole was still in the window, shot there by the previous owners’ sons. I bet the woman in the driveway didn’t know they used to grow pot in the basement.

I don’t get down to Louisville that much anymore. Almost all of my high school friends have moved away, just like me. But it is one of the few cities in this country that has my memories seamlessly integrated into its edifices. I can’t drive down a road without triggering a memory. There’s the house where my best friend in 8th grade lived before her family moved somewhere only the army knows where. There’s the music store where I learned to play flute and met the […]

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