Old Houses and Hometown History

Do you like old historic houses? I put this link at Old House Dreams about a Georgian style mansion up for sale in my town on my Facebook page and it's grabbed a lot of views and interest. 

Actually a writing friend I met at the Writers Retreat I recently attended in Monterey, CA posted the link on my Facebook first. Internet is a world shrinker and enlarger both. It brings us friends from all over the world and so makes the world smaller while at the same time it also opens up our vistas to see things we would have missed except for the internet. This might have been one of those things I would have missed even though the house for sale is right here in my hometown. It took a California friend to point it out to me.

Many of us like seeing historic houses and this one is a beauty, both in looks and in history. The site noted above not only shows the outside of the house, but takes you inside to tour the interior too since the house is up for sale. For the last several years, it's been a bed and breakfast and also a restaurant. I've eaten there several times with groups or sometimes just with my mom and sisters when we were celebrating one of our birthdays. I think once I even spoke to a group there about my books and writing. The last time I was there was with Mom a few years ago for her church circle. She was already having memory trouble then but still enjoyed socializing. 

As beautiful as Kavanaugh House is, its history is even more amazing. My grandmother, my mother and my aunts all went to high school there. My dad went one day, didn't like it, and didn't go back. He would have made a great student because he was gifted in math. Could look at an Algebra problem and get the right answer even though he didn't always follow the prescribed steps that our teachers wanted us to use when we were in school. 


Mrs. Kavanaugh was a true educator and she insisted on the best from all her students. Some young men boarded at the school or with others in town to attend the school as preparation for enrollment in military academies. Kavanaugh School was sometimes called "little Annapolis." 

She also loved the game of basketball, thus the gym in behind the school. My grandmother played basketball while she was attending high school. That was something I could never imagine - my grandmother playing ball. She seemed more comfortable working a crossword puzzle or playing cards. 

I had an easier time imagining Mrs. Kavanaugh. My mother said she carried a cane with her and did not hesitate to rap players with it if they weren't performing up to her expectations on the basketball court or perhaps in the classroom either. Several of Kavanaugh's players went on to play for the University of Kentucky including Forest "Aggie" Sales who became an All-American. 

My teacher in Angel Sister was created with Mrs. Kavanaugh in mind. I never knew her while she was alive, but she lived on in the stories that people told about her.  

Hope you enjoy the Kavanaugh House tour and if you decide to make a bid on the house, maybe someday we'll be hometown neighbors. 

A One Time Blue Event

I believe God created sports for a good reason. It's recreation. It's something that we enjoy. It teaches us a lot as well... I believe God is a sports fan. ~Luke Scott


I don't know about that, but I do know I'm a sports fan. Mostly I'm one of those armchair fans who watch from home with with my eyes riveted on the TV screen. Oh, I talk to the players, encourage them to steal the ball, make a shot. Sometimes I yell at them to rebound. Not that they can hear me from my spot on my living room couch. But I have to cheer them on, admire a great pass, and get excited about a fast break dunk. 

A rabid sports fan is one that boos a TV set. ~Jimmy Cannon

Okay, I might even boo sometimes. Never at the players on my team, but sometimes at those referees who obviously can't see!! LOL. 

We are inclined if we watch a football game or a baseball game, we have taken part in it. ~John F. Kennedy

It can be hard work being a fan who really gets involved in whether his or her team is playing well. Some of you out there probably think it's crazy to be a sports nut. Some of you are probably a sports nut over your favorite team the way I am over Kentucky basketball. 

It may be that all games are silly. But then, so are humans. ~Robert Lynd

Silly or not, I've been following Kentucky basketball since I was a young girl. I listened to every game on the radio even though my parents never bothered to listen. But there I was with my ear pressed up against the radio listening to Caywood Ledford call the UK basketball games. 

I've been to a few games over the years, but it had been a long time since I'd sat in Rupp Arena to cheer on the team. Then our son and daughter-in-law gave us tickets and so we climbed way up to Row Z in the upper arena and took in the ballgame last night. Actually, even though we were up high in what some call the nose-bleed seats, it was easy to see the action on the court and it was great fun to yell and have twenty thousand other nuts yelling with me. And we did, indeed, boo the referees. Roundly!! But we also cheered on our young team. We groaned when they missed a shot. We yelled defense when the players were working hard to get their first lead. We stomped and clapped and yelled with the feeling that we mattered to the outcome on the court. And it was fun. 

Going to a Kentucky basketball game is an event for many fans. Tickets are not easy to come by in the lower arena. This game before the students start back to school is when many "regular" fans, who rarely get to see a game in person, have more chance at getting a ticket. It was easy to see that attending the game was an event for many people because of how everybody had their phones out taking pictures like they were at a tourist attraction. And I guess that's where we were. A sports attraction. So we took a "selfie" too. If I look like I'm having more fun than my husband, that's because I am!!

How about you? Are you a big sports fan? And what team gets your blood pumping?

While looking for quotes for this post, I came across this one. What do you think? A lot of truth here, isn't there?

Andre Dawson has a bruised knee and is listed as day-to-day. Aren't we all? ~Vince Scully

March Madness

Some of you who know me or have been following my blog for a while know I love basketball. I started listening to the UK Wildcat games when I was just a kid and got my first little transistor radio. I don't know why. Nobody in my family had ever attended UK or any college. We were a farm family. College wasn't expected or encouraged for my parents. My mother graduated from high school one day and got married the next. My dad, who was ten years older than her, attended one day of high school, didn't like it, and never went back. It wasn't that he didn't like learning. He worked algebra problems for fun. Very few problems stumped him, but he didn't always get the answers the way our teachers told us to. It was just that school and sitting in a classroom weren't for him. 

I don't remember my parents listening to the Kentucky ballgames. They probably followed the scores. Most Kentuckians embraced Rupp's basketball teams. They were winners and that made Kentuckians proud. And it always gave you a talking connection. A simple "How about those Cats?" could get the conversation ball rolling almost as good as talking about the weather. Still can. Kids grew up bouncing basketballs on their driveways or spots worn bare of grass in their yards and they imagined themselves winners like the Wildcats. To give a little perspective of how much we got used to UK winning, right now the Wildcats have a home court winning streak of 50 (I think) but under Coach Rupp, the Wildcats went 12 years without a home loss. Fans were stunned when that streak was broken. Some of those years must have been when I started following the Cats.

And so, I love March Madness - until my team gets beat anyway. Then I tend to lose interest.  I always fill out one of the brackets - not for a pool, but just for fun - and nearly always have KY winning it all even when I know that's an unlikely scenario. I don't study the teams. I just pick them on whims. My whims weren't too good this year.

I think we need sports. It's good to have teams that we can follow. Players we can cheer on. I've been reading about the World War 2 years. The headlines for those years include a lot of sports stories. It was good to have baseball hitting streaks to think about occasionally instead of all the war news. It also makes me think about how many of those young men of the 1940s who stepped up to the enlistment tables and volunteered to fight were eighteen and nineteen year old kids just like the ballplayers running up and down basketball courts. 

Those kids picked up guns and began fighting. They piloted planes heavy with bombs. They crawled across the African countryside in tanks. They manned anti-aircraft guns on naval ships. They huddled in foxholes. They charged the beachheads. They ended up in prison camps in Japan and Germany. Many of them died too young. Others survived the frontlines of the conflict but were never the same. Without a doubt, as Tom Brokaw says in his book, the greatest generation.

Rising to the challenge. That's what winning basketball teams do and our country knows the freedom we have today because of the men and women who rose to the challenge during those war years.

Thanks for reading. Now to catch up on some scores and see how many more bad picks I made on my brackets.

Spring Passions - Wildflowers and Basketball

~~Spring has officially sprung. It's one of my four favorite seasons. That's narrowing it down, isn't it? Of course by the end of winter, spring is more than welcome and can definitely be a favorite time. The snow and cold of winter are all right for a short visit but this year winter out stayed its welcome. So spring was much anticipated by most of the folks I know. Some of them are designing their gardens. Some are painting and sprucing up with spring cleaning. Me, I'm watching basketball and planning to go wildflower hunting.

~~I grew up listening to Caywood Ledford doing the play by play on UK basketball and have been a fan ever since. Even before I was a teenager, I can remember sitting on the stairs next to the chimney that radiated a bit of heat with my ear up against my tiny transistor radio while everybody else in the family was watching t.v. Not me. I was seeing those ballplayers running up and down the court and cheering them on. Caywood's gone now and I have to listen to the national announcers on t.v. When we used to get our t.v. signal with the antenna, I'd turn the sound down on the t.v. and listen to the radio. I wish I could still do that, but now with the satellite the timing is too far off. It's just no fun hearing on the radio that the shot didn't go in before the ball leaves the player's hand and you're still trying to hope the ball through the net.

~~Some of you out there are probably thinking it's weird to get so caught up in March madness while some of the rest of you are no doubt cheering on your own favorite teams. But one thing sure basketfall fans always have something to talk about in March even if they're strangers.

~~My other springtime passion is hunting wildflowers in the woods on my farm. There is something special about those delicate blooms poking up through the layer of leaves on the forest floor or clinging to the rocks on the hillsides. It's like hope in bloom. Proof that life is good and joy can be found in the gifts of nature. I like taking pictures of the flowers and I'm glad for my digital camera now that means I can snap to my heart's content without having to print them all to see which ones are best. So it's almost time to lace up my shoes and go wildflower hunting.

~~Hope you are welcoming spring with joy and hope blooming in your hearts.