$3.59 a gallon

One of the things I most like to do is drive the backroads of Kentucky and southern Indiana and to an extent northern Tennessee. I've been doing it since I got my driver's license back when gas was 63 cents a gallon and milk was $1.68 a gallon. I still like to go camping, sometimes alone, sometimes with friends, but I haven't done much of that either. Last year on this weekend I was down in eastern Kentucky for the Hillbilly Days Festival in Pikeville.

Yesterday, I was at a picnic much closer to home, a political cookout for Ken Herndon in South Central Park, at Colorado and Weller avenues. It is in the neighborhood where my father was raised (on Homeview) when his parents' bakery was at Central and Colorado. After the picnic, we took the leftover burgers and franks down to B-J's Bar which is in the space where my grandparents bakery was fifty years ago. I played a few video games, drank a beer - my third this weekend, which is three more than usual - and left.

With gas at $3.59 a gallon, travelling even to South Central Park is getting expensive. Later today I get to go all the way out to my mother's house to do yard work. That's nearly 24 miles round trip. But, there is usually food, so I guess it is ok.

For me, the price of gas is beginning to take its toll. In the past I've not given it a second thought to venture out into the county and state highways with no agenda or map, ending up in places like Rugby, Tennessee; Belfry or Russellville, Kentucky; or Vincennes, Indiana. Now I know how much it costs to run up to Kroger for a gallon of milk, which is another subject all its own.

So, for the handful of you who visit for the occasional stories of here and there, I apologise for the lack of posting. Those stories will return, I promise. For the moment, you will just have to rely on my memory, which given they took a part of it out with the brain surgery in 2005, may not be what it once was. Maybe. Maybe not.