I’d like to speak to the manager!!!

I grew up pretty poor. We didn’t starve. We’re never homeless. But there were times my parents struggled to keep the lights on and food on the table. That being said, my mother always made sure we went to school clean and that our clothes had no holes in them.

We also moved a lot when I was a kid. I think it’s one of the reasons I’ve moved a lot as an adult. We never stayed for long anywhere. My dad would lose his job. The landlord would decide to let his sister rent our house. My favorite reason was the owner decided he didn’t want to rent to people with kids.

I was also a grownup kid. I always wanted to be with the adults and even though they tried to keep the struggles from me, I was acutely aware of our finances even as young as 7 or 8. I rarely asked for expensive things and tried to keep my Christmas wishes realistic.

My father was always coming up with creative ways to improve our situation. Once he bought two keeshond puppies. Pure breads that he was going to breed and sell for hundreds if not thousands of dollars. I’m embarrassed now at how they were treated. I’m pretty sure they died tied to a chain in our backyard. They never had puppies and we never made any money off them.

Another one of his brilliant ideas, was to buy into a housing development in Burnside, Kentucky. Over the course of a couple of years, he and my mom bought three undeveloped lots in a development that was going to be the next big thing in the community. The lots were adjacent to each other. He was going to hang on to them until their value grew, OR he was going to build us a home and we’d move there.

I remember being so excited the first time we drove there. For those of you NOT from Kentucky. Burnside is south of Somerset. Somerset is in the southern part of Kentucky about an hour and a half from Lexington. I can’t speak to traveling there now, but in 1975 it was a two lane road, traveling through multiple small towns.

Every so often we’d all pile in the car and my father would announce that we were going to check out “the lots.” We’d sit in the back of the car, my mom chain smoking in the front, watching the sites go by. After what seemed like hours, my father would announce that we were here.

As an eight-year old, I had no concept of what a quality piece of land should be, but I knew this was NOT a quality piece of land. It was rocky. It was overgrown with weeds. There were hardly any homes built in the development. Although my favorite was the A-frame homes on equally crappy land.

We’d climb out of the car and stand on the edge of the street, while my father walked “the lots.” Three equally rocky lots. He’d tell us where the house would go. What he was going to do. I’d try to stay out of the overgrown weeds, because I didn’t want chiggers. And truth be told there really was NOT much to look at.

After a while, we’d get back in the car and drive home. I don’t remember stops. I don’t remember lunch. I don’t remember anything other than the drive down, the 30 minutes admiring the land, and the drive home.

However, one time, my father took a detour after we left “the lots.”

We went to the location of Old Burnside at Lake Cumberland. Old Burnside was a small town, that was flooded over with the construction of Lake Cumberland. The buildings were left standing, the people moved, the land flooded and the lake created.

He drove us there on this particular day, because we’d had a severe lack of rain all summer. And he’d heard that you could see parts of the buildings. Sure enough, he was right. It had only been 20 years and there were ruins displayed over the water, where the drought had done it’s job.

We stood there looking. After a few minutes we walked back to the car. On our way back I saw a rock on the shore. I thought it was beautiful and asked my parents if I could have it and they said yes. The photo below is of that rock.

I have had that rock for 50 plus years now. It’s displayed in my office. It’s as special to me today as it was back then. I just thought it was cool. And I still do.

I held the rock in my lap on the drive home.

We never went back to Old Burnside, but at least twice a summer until I was in high school and old enough to say I didn’t want to go, we’d pile in what was now the pick up truck and treck down to look at “the lots.”

My father never built that house. And based on the last few times I was there, the lots never appreciated as a housing development never occurred. The last time I was there, it looked like an area where you might make crystal meth, if meth was being made in the early 80’s.

At some point, my mother made my father sell the lots. I have no idea what they bought them for. I have no idea what they sold them for. But I can assure you, my father did not get rich off the deal.

I haven’t been to Burnside in over 45 years. But ’m sure by now the remnants of the buildings are gone. But there are probably lots of cool stones along the shore of Lake Cumberland.

Adam’s prompt tonight was rocks.