135. The Sun Also Rises, even along the Left Bank of the James River

The Sun Also Rises. You know the book - or you should. Diane Brumback's blog (http://kywomen.typepad.com) has an entry today about women wanting to join in the Running of the Bulls at Pamplona, Spain. It may be elitist to say this, but if I have lost you at this point, then you need to do some reading. Some day we'll publish a reading list for your perusal here along the Left Bank of the Ohio River near Milepost 606.

One of my favorite books is Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, written in the 1920s about American ex-patriates in Paris shortly after the Great War. I commented on Diane's blog today that whenever I need a vacation and have neither the cash nor the time to take one, this book of Hemingway's suffices for a minute or two. It is a life I've never lived - but I think I could. Back in March, I mentioned my summer in Lexington, 1984, where a group of us involved in UK's Student Government in one way or another lounged around the bars up and down Euclid Avenue solving the problems of the world, usually intoxicated in one way or another. We drank and ate at Charlie Brown's, the Saratoga, and the old Lynagh's Pub. We'd go to Dr. Patterson's place and listen to his records while he pontificated on matters large and small. I was 23 at the time.

It wasn't the Running of the Bulls and taking in a weekend of fishing in a small Spanish village, but it was an escape from the humdrum workaday world that none of us were ready to dive into at the moment. A few of my group had never worked at all. I wasn't that lucky. I first began working at the age of 14, learning to fry doughnuts at the Tas-T-O donut shop on Blue Lick Road. I had worked in the County Clerk's office, the Sheriff's office, and the Board of Aldermen, by the time I had this first burnout - sneaking off to Lexington for eight months to do absolutely nothing - long before Jerry Seinfeld and friends made doing nothing tres chic.

Like all escapes, it didn't last and reality was re-realized along about late October when I trekked back home wondering where I had been and what had I accomplished. I went back to work for the City, re-established by residence in Camp Taylor, and ran for office in 1985, losing a 12-person race for a seat on Jefferson County's old Fiscal Court. It didn't matter - the votes were never legally counted due to a mistake in the way the election had been called the previous year. Sean Delahanty would have been seated had the election counted. But, it didn't.

The only reason for this entry is the allusion to Hemingway's book in Diane's blog. It is odd. Her blog is mostly about politics and Kentucky politics in particular. But she also hails as a spokesperson for Kentucky's women, and apparently, the women of Pamplona, Spain.

I am planning a break here soon. It will be a driving-break, a road-trip to the mountains and valleys of Virginia, after first passing through West Virginia, like Kentucky once a part of the Old Dominion. Kentucky left to become part of the New West. West Virginia left to be returned to the Federal Union, a decision Kentucky could never make up its mind on until long after the War of Secession, when we eventually decided to join the losing side. The plan for the trip is that of my friend Jessie's. She is a graduate of Randolph College and we are making a stop there while visiting some other sites in Kentucky's motherland.

Like Paris, several of the towns we'll be visiting have rivers running through them; the New, Kanawha, Rivanna, and the James. I doubt they have little latte shops along their Left Banks as does Paris on the Seine - no Montparnasse in Lynchburg, Virginia. But, hope springs eternal.