WHERE PARADISE LAY

"When I was a child my family would travel back to western Kentucky where my parents were born."

I hear this song and I'm transported back to 1970 and my family is on vacation in western Kentucky outside of Bowling Green at Beech Bend park, which the Green River runs past

"And there's a backwards old town that's often remembered so many times that my memories are worn."

Its a mid-summer afternoon and my older brother Earl and I have rented bikes from the park and we are biking down a shady dirt path through the countryside along the rivers edge. We are free as birds. It is one of those perfect times in your life, when you are running on all cylinders, enjoying all your senses, feeling alive and joyous and knowing that if it all ended at that very moment you would leave this world having known what it was to be truly happy.


"When I die let my ashes float down the Green River
Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester dam
I'll be halfway to Heaven with Paradise waitin'
Just five miles away from wherever I am." song by John Prine.