When I was born we lived in a campground. A couple years later we opened a Tourist shop next to Mammoth Cave NP and my mom ran it while my dad drove a truck across the country. I alternated doing both. My education from day 1 was what I learned from the road and the world coming to me in that little shop. I made friends at truck stops and coffee shops and diners. I talked to blue collar, white collar and no collar. On the road I never met a stranger and when I wasn’t on it I was yearning for it. I needed it’s stories and I needed to tell them even more, essentially becoming the “Forever Tourist”.
At first my adventures were just local. I discovered civil war history in my yard, Native American artifacts in my neighbors yard and then before long I was venturing out on the ridge and in the caves and at strangers tables at diners asking endless questions about the area and themselves. Today I spend my time traveling the backroads and main streets of America. I visit the places considered “sleepy” in hopes of waking them up, if just for a little while. Authenticity and tradition are words that roll off the tongue and hide in the nooks only a small town can offer. It’s these places, the places where big things once happened, that use to be the heart of America. It’s roads were the arteries that pumped life into the land and if we don’t tell their stories they will die and the core of what America was founded on will die with it. There’s not a place that I’ve visited that I didn’t find a story worth telling, a city worth saving and a lesson I didn’t learn because the story of a small town in America is the story of America and my goal has always been and will always be to keep it alive. So grab some coffee and send me some DM’s cause I want to know what your favorite small town is and why.
