The Threads That Connect Us: Reflections on New York, New Jersey, and the Universality of Humanity

Sometimes a journey becomes much more than a trip. It becomes an opportunity to reflect on who we are, where we have been, what we have accomplished, and how we are all connected as human beings. Over the past two years, I have traveled from my home in Bowling Green, Kentucky, to New Jersey and New York City to visit my son, Tony, and his wife, Danielle. Tony and Danielle moved to New Jersey about three years ago, returning to the area where Danielle was born and raised and where her family has established its roots. Those visits gave me the opportunity to experience one of America's most remarkable metropolitan regions. But beyond the landmarks, restaurants, transportation systems, and bustling streets, I found myself reflecting on a much larger subject: the interconnectedness of humanity. We are all part of a vast network of people, communities, technology, history, and shared experiences. Sometimes we recognize those connections in the simplest moments. At other times, we encounter them in places that change the way we see the world. Remembering September 11 During my first visit last year, Tony and Danielle took me to the 9/11 Memorial, where the reflecting pools mark the footprints of the former World Trade Center towers. Standing beside those enormous pools, looking at the names of the people who died, was a sobering experience. This year, Tony, and I returned to Lower Manhattan, and I had the opportunity to visit the 9/11 Memorial Museum for the first time. Before our visit, we had lunch with a former girlfriend from my Ole Miss days in the early 1980s. We had not seen each other in approximately 41 years. She has spent 38 years working as a flight attendant, while her husband has worked for years as an airline pilot. Reconnecting with someone from an earlier chapter of my life was a reminder of how time moves forward while certain memories remain with us. During that same trip, Danielle's father shared his own recollections of September 11. He had commuted to Lower Manhattan for years and had been close to the events of that terrible day. Over dinner on Thursday evening, he showed me photographs and explained how his company had been involved in insurance-related inventory and documentation. Hearing his account brought the tragedy closer to home. September 11 was not simply an event recorded in history books. It was something that happened to real people, families, businesses, and communities. Its consequences reached far beyond New York City, affecting New Jersey, the entire United States, and people around the world. I think most of us who were old enough to remember that day can recall where we were when we first heard the news. We remember the disbelief, the fear, the images on television, and the uncertainty about what might happen next.

Inside the 9/11 Memorial Museum, those memories took on another dimension. The exhibits, artifacts, photographs, and personal accounts conveyed the enormous scale of the loss. Nearly 3,000 people died in the September 11 attacks, leaving families and friends to cope with an absence that would never truly disappear. Walking through the museum was a somber and deeply moving experience. I found myself thinking about the individual lives behind those numbers: people who had gone to work that morning, people traveling on airplanes, first responders rushing toward danger, and families who expected their loved ones to return home. While walking through the memorial and museum, I also became aware of the atmosphere around me. There was something difficult to put into words—a profound sense of sadness, reflection, and human loss. I cannot explain every sensation I experienced, but I know the visit affected me. It reminded me that history is not merely a collection of dates and events. History is made up of human lives. And when we stand in places where great tragedy occurred, we are reminded of how fragile life can be, how deeply our lives affect one another, and how much we share despite our differences. The Remarkable Things Human Beings Can Build Yet my visits to New York and New Jersey also inspired a different kind of reflection: amazement at what human beings can accomplish. Consider New York City. Its immense skyline, bridges, tunnels, skyscrapers, railways, airports, and transportation networks represent generations of human labor, engineering, planning, invention, and cooperation. During my first visit, Tony and Danielle and I explored several familiar landmarks. We saw the Empire State Building, Times Square, and Rockefeller Center. We ate at Katz's Delicatessen, traveled by subway and bus, and took a ferry across the water. We eventually returned to Grand Central Terminal and caught a train back to New Jersey. This year, I traveled through the Holland Tunnel for the first time on a Lyft ride into Manhattan. I also spent time near the waterfront, where we could see the Brooklyn Bridge and observe the activity around Lower Manhattan's shipping areas. Experiences like these make you appreciate the enormous amount of work required to create and maintain a modern city. Think about the engineering involved in constructing a tunnel beneath a river, building a bridge across a waterway, or designing a subway system that moves thousands of people throughout a densely populated region. Consider the highways that connect communities, the airports that connect continents, and the aircraft that carry passengers across oceans. None of these systems exists in isolation. They depend on countless people working together, often without ever meeting one another. The engineers, construction workers, electricians, mechanics, pilots, train operators, maintenance crews, architects, and transportation planners all contribute to the larger system. Their individual efforts become part of something much bigger than any one person. That is one of the things I find fascinating about modern civilization. We depend on the knowledge, labor, and cooperation of people we will probably never know. A person in Kentucky can board an airplane, travel to New Jersey, take a train into Manhattan, ride a subway beneath the streets, walk across a busy city, and return home again. Behind that seemingly ordinary journey lies an extraordinary history of human invention and cooperation. Our modern world is a vast web of connections, and most of the time, we take those connections for granted. Thomas Edison and the Power of Human Ingenuity Another highlight of my trip was visiting Menlo Park, New Jersey, where Thomas Edison established his famous research laboratory. The site commemorates the work of Edison and the people who collaborated with him on inventions that helped transform modern life. A small museum preserves historical information and artifacts, while a prominent monument topped by a representation of an incandescent light bulb pays tribute to his legacy. Edison and his team helped develop technologies that changed how people lived, worked, communicated, and experienced the world. The phonograph, introduced in 1877, made it possible to record and reproduce sound. Edison's Menlo Park laboratory also played a central role in developing a practical incandescent lighting system in 1879. What impressed me was not simply the inventions themselves, but the process behind them. Innovation requires curiosity, experimentation, persistence, and a willingness to learn from failure. It often involves people building on ideas that others have developed before them. Edison is frequently remembered as an individual inventor, but his achievements also remind us of the importance of teams, skilled workers, and the accumulation of knowledge across generations. The light bulb is a particularly fitting symbol for my reflections on interconnectedness. The electric light transformed homes, factories, streets, and businesses. It changed how people could use their time and how communities could function after dark. Today, we benefit from countless inventions that make our lives more convenient and connect us in ways earlier generations could scarcely have imagined. The same human ingenuity that helped develop electric lighting has contributed to the machinery, transportation systems, communication technologies, and infrastructure that surround us. Standing at Menlo Park, I was reminded that our present world rests on the discoveries and efforts of people who came before us. We inherit their achievements, build upon them, and pass something forward to the next generation. In that sense, we are all part of a continuing human story. Beyond the Stereotypes My travels also reminded me of something that I believe is important in America today: we should be willing to look beyond stereotypes and experience people and places for ourselves. I am a Southerner. I was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and have spent much of my life in Tennessee and Kentucky. Like people from any region, I have encountered certain assumptions about other parts of the country and the people who live there. New York City and New Jersey have their own reputations. People sometimes describe Northeasterners as hurried, blunt, or unfriendly. Others imagine the region primarily through television shows, crime stories, movies, and popular culture. But a place is never fully represented by a stereotype. During my visits, I enjoyed eating in local diners and restaurants, experiencing the transportation systems, exploring the waterfront, and meeting people. I found plenty to appreciate, including the friendliness and hospitality I encountered. Of course, no region is made up entirely of one kind of person. New York City is different from the surrounding New Jersey communities, and every neighborhood has its own character. But that is precisely the point: people deserve to be encountered as individuals rather than reduced to assumptions about where they live. We may speak with different accents, eat different foods, and approach life in different ways. Yet we share many of the same concerns. We want our families to be safe, our children to have opportunities, our work to mean something, and our lives to contain moments of happiness and connection. Travel gives us the opportunity to discover those commonalities for ourselves. Sometimes, a conversation over dinner can teach us more about another community than a hundred assumptions ever could. The Jersey Shore, Music, and American Culture My time in New Jersey also included a visit to the Keansburg beach area along the Jersey Shore. There is something enjoyable about experiencing a place that has its own identity, history, and cultural associations. The Jersey Shore has appeared in countless films, television productions, and popular stories. It has also been associated with organized-crime history, although I encountered no such activity during my visit. For me, the region also brought to mind Bruce Springsteen. Springsteen grew up in the Freehold area of New Jersey and developed his musical career in the broader Jersey Shore scene, including Asbury Park, where local venues helped shape his early musical identity. As someone who enjoys music, I find it interesting to visit places associated with the artists and cultural movements that have influenced American life. Music is another form of human connection. A song written by someone in New Jersey can resonate with a listener in Kentucky, California, London, or anywhere else in the world. The artist and listener may never meet, yet a melody or a lyric can express an emotion that both understand. That is one of the remarkable things about art. It crosses geographical, cultural, and generational boundaries. We can be connected by a song, a story, a film, a photograph, or a memory, even when we have little else in common. Family: The Personal Side of a Larger World For all the history, engineering, architecture, and cultural experiences my trips offered, the most personal reason for traveling was family. My son, Tony, and my daughter-in-law, Danielle, are building their lives in New Jersey. Visiting them gives me an opportunity to participate in that part of their lives, spend time together, and get to know more of Danielle's family and extended family. Those relationships matter. It is easy to talk about humanity in broad terms—to discuss nations, cities, technology, transportation, and global communication. But humanity becomes real through the people we know and love. It is present in a family gathering, a shared meal, a conversation about an event that changed someone's life, or a reunion with a friend from decades earlier. Meeting Danielle's family and hearing her father's memories of September 11 helped me understand the region through the experiences of people who actually lived there. Reconnecting with my former Ole Miss girlfriend after 41 years reminded me that our lives contain many chapters, and that people from our past can reappear in unexpected ways. And spending time with Tony and Danielle reinforced the importance of maintaining those connections, even when distance separates us. The highways, railways, airports, and tunnels may bring us together physically, but it is the relationships we nurture that make the journey meaningful. We Are All Part of the Same Human Story When I look back on my two trips to New Jersey and New York City, I see more than a collection of destinations. I see a memorial to the thousands of lives lost on September 11. I see a city built through generations of human labor and ingenuity. I see the legacy of Thomas Edison and the people who helped change the world through invention. I see the interconnected systems that allow millions of people to travel, work, communicate, and live alongside one another. And I see family, friendship, music, memories, and the unexpected connections that make life interesting. These experiences have reinforced my belief that we are all interconnected, whether we recognize it or not. Our lives depend on the work of people around us. Our communities depend on cooperation. Our history is shaped by the actions of individuals whose decisions can affect millions. Our personal lives are enriched by relationships that sometimes span decades and geographical boundaries. We are capable of extraordinary accomplishments, but we are also vulnerable to tragedy. We can build magnificent cities and develop remarkable technologies, yet we remain human beings who experience grief, love, hope, fear, and joy. Perhaps that is the most important lesson of all. We should appreciate the achievements of civilization without forgetting the people who made them possible. We should remember our tragedies without losing sight of our capacity for compassion. And we should approach people and places with curiosity rather than allowing stereotypes to determine what we believe. We do not have to live in the same city, belong to the same generation, share the same background, or hold identical beliefs to recognize something of ourselves in one another. The world is connected by physical systems—highways, bridges, tunnels, railroads, airports, and communication networks. But beneath those systems is an even greater network: the shared humanity that binds us together. I returned to Bowling Green with a greater appreciation for the world around me, the history that shaped it, and the relationships that give it meaning. Travel can broaden our horizons, but it can also bring us closer to a simple truth: despite all our differences, we are participants in the same human story. And the more willing we are to learn from one another, the more connected that story becomes.

Calling Bowling Green Home

There is something about the word home. For some people, home is the place where they were born. For others, it is where they grew up, where their parents still live, or where they spent their childhood summers. And then there are those of us who discover home somewhere along the way. For me, that place is Bowling Green, Kentucky. I came here nearly 40 years ago with my late wife, Patty, who was from Russellville. I was a young man who had grown up in Memphis, Tennessee, spent some of my formative years in Mississippi, and attended the University of Mississippi in Oxford. For a long time, I thought I would always miss those places. I missed Memphis. I missed Oxford. I missed Ole Miss—the people, the memories, the Southern atmosphere and the places that had shaped me. I still love those places, and I always will. But somewhere along the way, Bowling Green stopped being the place I had moved to and became the place I belonged. It became home.

After nearly four decades, I don't feel like I'm living somewhere temporarily. This is where my life happened. This is where I worked, made friends, built a marriage and a life with Patty, and watched a community grow and change. This is where I learned that home isn't necessarily where you started. Sometimes it's where you stayed. One of the things I've noticed over the years—particularly through my work at Walmart—is how many people I encounter who are new to Bowling Green. Some are visiting, some are passing through, and some have just moved here. I've talked with people from all over the country: California, Washington, New York, the Midwest and the Northeast. People who have lived in big cities and expensive metropolitan areas are sometimes looking for something different. Many tell me they like Bowling Green. They like the pace, the people and having room to breathe. Compared with some of the country's most expensive communities, they often find that their money goes farther here. That's not to say Bowling Green doesn't have its challenges. Every city does. But there is something appealing about a community that can still feel like a city without losing the character of a town. And perhaps even more remarkable is the fact that Bowling Green has become home to people who have traveled much farther than California or New York. Immigrants and refugees have arrived from countries and communities affected by war and political instability, carrying their languages, traditions, memories and stories with them. They came looking for safety, opportunity and a chance to build another chapter of their lives. They found a home here, too. That's one of the things I love about Bowling Green: home doesn't have to look the same for everybody. Working as a front-end cashier gives you an unusual perspective on a community. You see people—lots of people. You see those who have lived here all their lives. You see families who have just moved into town. You see travelers stopping for a few days. You see people buying groceries for their first apartment and people shopping for the home they've lived in for 50 years. And occasionally, you have a conversation that stays with you. Just yesterday, I met a couple from Seattle, Washington. The gentleman told me he was a trial attorney and was in Kentucky working on a case. We happened to get into a conversation about plastic bags and the amount of plastic such as water and soda bottles that eventually makes its way into the world's oceans. He jokingly asked me why someone from Kentucky would care about that. I told him I'm a journalist and a writer. I studied journalism at Ole Miss, worked for newspapers, and spent years observing people and communities and trying to understand the world around me. That's what writers do. We notice things. We ask questions. We look beyond our own front porch. Being from Kentucky doesn't mean you only care about Kentucky. The oceans belong to all of us. The environment belongs to all of us. The problems facing humanity don't stop at the state line. I've watched documentaries about the enormous amount of plastic entering the oceans—plastic bottles, containers, packaging, bags and countless other pieces of plastic. There are even technologies being developed to collect plastic from the ocean. It's a reminder that something as ordinary as a plastic bag can eventually become part of a much larger story. That's the way I tend to look at life. I observe. I think. I write. And I try to understand. Maybe that's why I understand the people who move to Bowling Green. Because I remember being the newcomer. I remember coming here nearly 40 years ago and having to build a life in a place that wasn't the place where I grew up. Eventually, the unfamiliar became familiar. The streets became recognizable. The faces became friends. The community became mine. And the city I once thought of as somewhere I had moved to became the city I couldn't imagine leaving. That's what happens sometimes. You don't necessarily choose home all at once. Home chooses you slowly. It happens through ordinary days, through jobs and friendships, through marriage and family, through loss and heartbreak, through the places where you celebrate and the places where you grieve. It happens through the grocery-store conversations, the people you see at church, the familiar streets, the restaurants you return to and the people who recognize you when you walk through the door. Eventually, you realize something: I'm home. Bowling Green isn't perfect. No place is. But perhaps perfection isn't what we're really looking for. Maybe we're looking for a place where we can build something—a place where a young couple can begin a life, where someone from California can find a community that feels more affordable and manageable, where someone from Seattle can pass through and have an unexpected conversation with a Kentucky cashier about the oceans, and where an immigrant or refugee fleeing a war-torn country can begin again. And maybe it's a place where somebody born in Memphis can arrive at 24 years old and, nearly 40 years later, realize that he doesn't miss home anymore—because he found another one. I still love Memphis. I still love Mississippi. And Ole Miss will always have a special room in my heart. I keep up with the Rebels, still follow the university, and still have friends and memories there. You never have to abandon where you came from to appreciate where you are. But today, when somebody asks me where home is, I don't have to think very long. I live in Bowling Green, Kentucky. I've lived here for almost 40 years. And after all those years, I can finally say it without hesitation: Bowling Green isn't just where I live. It's home.

The Weekend I Went Home: From Sigma Pi to the LSU-Ole Miss Grudge Match

In the fall of 1983, I made a decision that seemed insignificant at the time: I left Oxford just as a fraternity weekend was about to explode. Forty-three years later, with LSU coming to town and former Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin on the opposite sideline, I find myself if I lived in Oxford, Miss., now, I would make the same choice again. There are some weekends when you know you ought to be somewhere else. For me, the first came when I was a 21-year-old sophomore at the University of Mississippi, living in the old Sigma Pi house on Fraternity Row. Word had spread that another Sigma Pi chapter from Arkansas was planning a pledge walkout, with somewhere between 20 and 30 pledges expected in Oxford. Some college guys would have heard that and thought, This is going to be one hell of a weekend. I thought, I think I'll go home.

So I headed back to Hernando and my dad's lake house in Eudora, Mississippi, looking for peace and quiet. I wasn't interested in the partying or whatever fraternity circus was about to descend on Oxford. Apparently, I missed quite a weekend. When I returned Sunday night, I heard that the Arkansas chapter had packed a couple dozen pledges into the back of a U-Haul truck and headed for Oxford. Even now, I can't imagine that trip: 20-some people crowded into a dark, hot truck with little ventilation, no cell phones and no easy way to communicate with the drivers. I'm somewhat claustrophobic, and that would not have been my idea of a good time. But this was 1983. There were no smartphones, GPS devices or instant calls. You were simply along for the ride. Once the pledges arrived, the party was on. The two chapters joined forces, and Oxford became their playground. There were scavenger hunts, drinking, running around campus and, depending on whose story you believed, somewhere between 10 and 20 kegs consumed over the weekend. When I came back, I saw the evidence: Empty beer kegs were stacked behind the fraternity house. One of our brothers was a Stroh's beer representative and had gotten us old beer lights and neon signs for the fraternity-house windows. I had one myself, and I wish I still did. Those pieces of college memorabilia become more valuable with time—not because they're worth money, but because they carry memories. That beer light would take me right back to Fraternity Row, the old Sigma Pi house and the weekend I decided to go home. Forty-three years later. Now it's 2026. I'm 64, living in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and Ole Miss is preparing to play LSU in Oxford. This time, the commotion isn't coming from a fraternity house. It's coming from the football stadium, on campus and a small deep south college town of 28,000 citizens. Lane Kiffin left Ole Miss for LSU at the end of the previous season, just as Ole Miss was entering the College Football Playoff picture. He took a lucrative opportunity in Baton Rouge, and Ole Miss fans have had plenty to say about how he left. Some understand the decision. Others don't. For many, the wound is still fresh. I understand that feeling. Lane Kiffin was the coach of my alma mater, and he left at the most emotionally charged point imaginable. So when LSU comes into Oxford with Kiffin on the other sideline, it's easy to understand why the atmosphere will be intense. But I won't be there. I'll be in my comfortable living room in Bowling Green, with Mr. Jude nearby, a television, some popcorn and my memories. I'll have a front-row seat to the madness without being anywhere near it. Because I've learned something since 1983: Sometimes the smartest seat in the stadium is the one in your living room. I remember what it felt like. That is what connects this game to the old fraternity weekend. In 1983, I wasn't making a statement or afraid of anybody. I simply knew I didn't want to spend the weekend in a fraternity party that was likely to get out of hand. So I went home and returned to the stories: the kegs, scavenger hunts, trouble with campus police and everything else that happened while I was gone. I got the best part: The memories without the hangover. More than four decades later, I'm doing essentially the same thing. The difference is that I'm no longer a sophomore escaping a fraternity party. I'm a 64-year-old Ole Miss alumnus in Bowling Green, watching thousands of football fans descend on Oxford for one of the most emotionally charged games Ole Miss has played in years. I hope nobody gets hurt. I hope the rivalry stays a rivalry and doesn't turn ugly. I hope people remember it's a football game—and that nobody throws a bottle or anything else into a crowd. At my age, I have no desire to be the innocent person standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. I'll take my recliner, my television, Mr. Jude at my feet and my memories of Oxford—especially that Sunday night in 1983, when I walked into the Sigma Pi house and saw all those empty kegs stacked behind the building. I wasn't there when the party happened, but somehow I can still see it. Maybe that's what getting older does. You realize that the places you once thought you'd never leave become the places you remember most. Ole Miss was one of those places for me. So were Oxford and Fraternity Row. I went to Ole Miss as a young man and left with a journalism degree, lifelong memories, friendships and stories. Every once in a while, decades later, something takes me right back. So when the crowd roars this weekend, I'll raise a glass from Kentucky—to the young man I was, the university that shaped him and the places that taught me home is wherever memory, gratitude and love meet. Hotty Toddy. See less

The Orkin Man In The Attic

Sometimes the past has a funny way of finding you. Mine came looking for me recently in a plastic storage bin in my attic. The bin had been sitting up there for almost 20 years, holding pieces of a career I had almost forgotten: awards, letters, coffee mugs, flashlights, shirts, trinkets and other memorabilia from my years in the pest-control business. There was Orkin stuff. There was Ecolab stuff. There were reminders of a career that lasted 27 years and, in many ways, changed my life. The plastic bin itself didn't survive. After nearly two decades of Kentucky heat that sometimes pushed past 100 degrees and winters that brought bitter cold, the plastic had deteriorated. When I finally pulled it down, it practically fell apart in my hands. But inside, remarkably, much of my history was still intact. As I sorted through those things, I started thinking about how I got there in the first place. It certainly wasn't the career I had envisioned when I graduated from Ole Miss. I had spent five years studying print journalism, with an emphasis in public relations and a minor in sociology. Journalism was what I knew. It was what I wanted to do. It was also where I met Patty. We met at St. John's Catholic Church, eventually married, and started our family. Our son, Galen Jr.—Tony, as we always called him—came along, and life moved us to Kentucky. We moved to Russellville, Patty's hometown, in 1987. I worked briefly for the newspaper there, covering sports, before we moved to Bowling Green in February 1988. Eventually I landed at the Bowling Green Daily News, where I worked in the newsroom as a reporter, book reviewer and editorial assistant. I loved the newspaper business.

But there was one problem. I wasn't making enough money. We had bought a home. We had a new car. We had a family to support. Patty was working, too, and eventually she made a career change of her own, leaving a manufacturing human-resources job to work for a well-known eye doctor in Bowling Green. We both knew we needed to make more money. That's when a man named Bill Guffey entered the picture. Bill was a manager with Orkin in Owensboro, Kentucky. I knew him because he was the grandson of my next-door neighbor, and Bill and I had something else in common: We liked to run. Back in those days, when a lot of us baby boomers were caught up in the running craze, we'd run 5Ks, 10Ks and whatever else we could find. Bill suggested that I consider pest control. Good pay. Good benefits. A chance to support my family. I listened. After five years in the newspaper business, I traded my reporter's notebook for a pest-control truck. And I'll be honest: My ego didn't like it. I'd gone from working in a newspaper newsroom to becoming, as I jokingly thought of it, a "bug man." For the first couple of years, I hated pest control. Not because of the work itself, but because I was still trying to figure out who I was. I had an identity tied to being a journalist. I had gone to college for five years. I had worked in a newsroom. I was supposed to be a writer. Now I was knocking on people's doors, carrying pesticides and crawling under houses. It took me a while to understand something that would become one of the most important lessons of my life: I was not my job. My job was simply how I made a living. I remember going to the library and listening to Dr. Wayne Dyer tapes. He talked about the person on the inside rather than the image we create on the outside. His ideas about ego and identity helped me put things into perspective. I finally realized there was nothing wrong with being a pest-control technician. I was still Galen. I was still a husband. I was still a father. I was still a writer. I was still the same person who had gone to Ole Miss and studied journalism. I just happened to make my living getting rid of bugs. And once I got over myself, something interesting happened. I got good at it. I stayed with Orkin for 11 years. Eventually, I moved on to Ecolab, where I spent another 15 years. Twenty-seven years in pest control. Twenty-seven years of crawling into attics and crawl spaces, walking through restaurants and businesses, treating homes, solving problems and meeting people from all walks of life. And, like any job, there were some stories. I've nearly gotten myself stuck in crawl spaces more than once. There were moments when I was wedged into places where I wondered whether I was going to get back out. A couple of times I came close to having a panic attack. There were mistakes, too. Some could have been serious. Fortunately, I had good management teams who understood that people make mistakes. They helped correct the situations and, when necessary, helped get me out of trouble. That's one of the things you learn when you spend decades working for a company: You represent the company when you're out in the field. If something goes wrong, the company has to deal with it. But you also learn to be accountable. You learn to pay attention. You learn that safety matters. And you learn that one of the most important parts of pest control isn't the chemicals. It's the person behind the wheel. Driving was a major responsibility. You had to obey the speed limit, follow the rules of the road and take care of yourself and everyone else around you. Over 27 years, I developed a pretty good safety record. Looking back now, I'm proud of that. I've also thought about the pesticides themselves. Someone recently posted on Facebook about concerns over herbicides used on crops, fruits and vegetables. She mentioned that it was one reason she didn't eat cereal. I jokingly responded that, I guess, I was doomed. After all, I had worked around pesticides for 27 years. I'm 64 now, and so far, knock on wood, I've been fortunate. But I'm also realistic enough to know that nobody gets a guarantee about the future. When I was considering going to work for Orkin all those years ago, I talked to my priest about it. His advice was simple. "Galen, you've got to support your family." That stayed with me. Every occupation carries some kind of risk. Construction workers build the buildings we live and work in. People dig ditches and tunnels. Ironworkers climb skyscrapers. Workers maintain towers and electrical systems. People do jobs that require them to put themselves in dangerous situations every single day. Somebody has to do those jobs. I did mine. And I tried to do it safely and responsibly. That's really what a career is, isn't it? You find a way to make a living. You take care of your family. You show up. You do the best you can. And if you're lucky, you learn something about yourself along the way. That's what pest control taught me. It taught me humility. It taught me that a job title doesn't make you who you are. It taught me how to deal with people. It taught me responsibility. And, yes, it taught me quite a bit about bugs. Funny thing is, years later, people still remember me as the Orkin man. I'm reminded of that every now and then. Recently, while working part-time as a cashier at Walmart, a woman recognized me. She had been one of my customers decades ago. She remembered me. I vaguely remembered her, too, although I couldn't quite place everything. And I'll admit, I was a little embarrassed that she remembered me better than I remembered her. But then I thought about it. Why should I be embarrassed? Those years were a part of my life. They were years when I was working hard, supporting my family and building a career. Another reminder came recently at the gym. I met a young man who had started his own pest-control company. We'd had lunch together at Smokey Pig barbecue, and he had asked me about the business. When I saw him at the gym, we started talking again. I found myself telling him stories. The crawl spaces. The close calls. The mistakes. The funny things that happen when you're walking into people's homes and businesses every day. He was picking my brain. And I realized something. I had become the old guy with the stories. The young man was the one learning from me. For 27 years, I had been the one learning from somebody else. Now I was the guy who had been there. That's a pretty good feeling. And maybe that's why I finally decided to bring that old storage bin down from the attic. I wanted to see what was left. As I went through the awards, letters, coffee mugs, shirts and little pieces of memorabilia, I realized I wasn't really sorting through junk. I was sorting through a chapter of my life. Some things I'll keep. Some things I'll probably get rid of. And some of the more unusual pieces may even end up on eBay, because somebody out there might consider them collectible. But I'm keeping the things that remind me of the man I was back then. The young father trying to make a living. The former newspaper guy trying to swallow his pride. The Orkin man learning his trade. The Ecolab employee building a career. The husband and father doing what he had to do to take care of his family. Today, I'm working part-time at Walmart. I've been there for several years, although I had to step away for a while to help take care of Patty when she became ill. I've returned to a place where I know a lot of people, and it sometimes feels like a big family. I'm at a different stage of life now. I'm drawing Social Security. I'm working part-time. I enjoy seeing people, talking to customers and fellow associates, and making a little extra money. Would I rather not have to work? Sure. But I've discovered that I like being around people. And I like having somewhere to go. Maybe that's another lesson I've learned. We spend so much of our lives working that it's easy to think our jobs are who we are. They're not. They're chapters. Some chapters are short. Some last 27 years. Some begin with a newspaper reporter carrying a notebook. Some begin with a pest-control technician carrying a sprayer. And some begin with an older man standing in an attic, pulling an old plastic storage bin apart and wondering where all those years went. The bin may have fallen apart. But the memories didn't. And neither did the pride. Because when I look back at those 27 years, I don't see a "bug man." I see a husband. A father. A worker. A man who learned to put his ego aside and do what he needed to do. And, after all these years, I'm pretty proud of that Orkin man.

The Quiet Side Of The Nuclear Reactor

“This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.” The Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant satalong the Tennessee River just outside Athens, Alabama, looking about as serious as a place could look. There were no second chances at Browns Ferry. Everything had a procedure. Everything had a checklist. Everything had somebody responsible for it. At sixty-four years old, Daniel Mercer understood that better than most. Daniel was the kind of man who had spent his life believing that if you worked hard, kept your word and treated people right, things generally had a way of working out. He had earned his bachelor's degree in finance from the University of Mississippi and later completed an MBA. His career had taken him through the business and administrative side of the energy industry before eventually bringing him to Browns Ferry, where he served as a senior site administrator. It wasn't a glamorous job. There were budgets, personnel matters, schedules, meetings, reports and enough paperwork to keep a man busy until retirement. But Daniel liked it. He liked being useful. And after losing his wife of nearly forty years, being useful had become more important to him than he cared to admit. His wife had been gone a little over a year, and Daniel was still learning what life looked like without her. Loneliness didn't always hurt. Sometimes it just sat there beside you. Quietly. Then there was Cindy Smith. Cindy was fifty-one years old and had never married. She had no children, and her career had become the center of her life. She was highly educated, highly disciplined and one of the most respected people at Browns Ferry. Cindy had earned a bachelor's degree in nuclear engineering before going on to earn a master's degree in nuclear engineering. She had spent decades working her way through the nuclear industry, gaining experience in operations, engineering, safety and plant management. She had also earned her Senior Reactor Operator credentials, something Daniel understood required an extraordinary amount of training and responsibility. By the time she became plant manager, Cindy had spent much of her adult life around nuclear reactors. She understood them. She respected them. And perhaps more importantly, she understood the responsibility that came with being responsible for thousands of people working around something that demanded absolute attention to detail. Cindy was serious about her job. Very serious. But Daniel soon discovered there was another side to her.

Cats. Cindy loved cats. Not just the ones somebody could take home from a shelter. She cared about the forgotten ones. The feral ones. The cats that lived behind restaurants, underneath abandoned buildings and around warehouses, surviving on whatever food they could find. After work, Cindy sometimes drove around Athens feeding them. She also volunteered with people at the local animal shelter and helped organize efforts to get feral cats fed, vaccinated and, when possible, adopted. Daniel thought that was an interesting contradiction. Here was a woman responsible for one of the most complicated industrial facilities in the South, somebody who could sit in a meeting discussing reactor safety and plant operations with engineers and executives, and then spend her evening looking under a bush for a frightened stray cat. That was the side of Cindy he liked most. And, truth be told, Daniel thought she was pretty. Not pretty in some Hollywood sort of way. Pretty in a quieter way. She had a reserved smile, a soft voice and a habit of listening carefully before she answered somebody. She wasn't the kind of woman who needed everybody in the room to notice her. Daniel noticed her anyway. Because of their positions at Browns Ferry, both of them understood that any personal relationship had to be handled carefully. There were workplace policies. There were professional responsibilities. And there was the simple fact that neither one of them could afford to have their judgment questioned. So they were careful. They started with coffee. Then lunch. Then dinner at a little restaurant outside Athens. Nothing improper. Nothing secretive. They talked about work, movies, books and their lives before Browns Ferry had become such a large part of them. Cindy talked about cats. Daniel talked about his dog. “You know,” Cindy said one evening, “I think I'm probably becoming a cat lady.” Daniel smiled. “I believe you've already crossed that bridge.” She laughed. “Well, what does that make you?” “A dog person.” “You're the one with that Australian Shepherd, aren't you?” “Mr. G.” “That's his name?” “That's what I call him.” “How old is he?” “Ten.” Cindy smiled. “That's getting up there.” “Don't you tell him that,” Daniel said. “He still thinks he's a puppy.” Cindy laughed. For a moment, Daniel thought maybe there was something there. Maybe. They went to a movie. They had coffee a couple more times. They went to another restaurant. Four or five outings in all. Daniel began thinking about Cindy more than he probably should have. The problem was that feelings have a funny way of showing up where they're not invited. Daniel knew the rules. He knew the risks. And he knew that Cindy was his superior. Still, he couldn't help the fact that he was becoming romantically attracted to her. He admired her intelligence. He admired her independence. He admired the fact that she could spend all day making decisions about a nuclear power plant and then spend half the night worrying about whether some half-wild cat had enough food. And somewhere along the way, admiration became desire to date her in manner of more than just friends. One afternoon, after they'd been talking outside the administrative offices, Daniel finally worked up enough courage to ask something he'd been thinking about for weeks. “Cindy?” “Yes?” “I was wondering something.” She looked at him. Daniel hesitated. “Would it be all right if I held your hand the next time we go out to have coffee or to a movie?” Cindy's expression changed. Not dramatically. Just enough. “No, Daniel.” He nodded. “All right.” And that was all he said. But he understood. A few days later, Cindy asked him to meet her after work. They sat across from each other at a quiet restaurant. Daniel knew before she said anything. “Daniel,” she said, “I think we need to stop this.” He looked down at the table for a moment. “I figured you might say that.” “I don't want there to be any misunderstanding.” “There isn't.” “I don't want a romantic relationship with you.” Daniel swallowed. “I understand.” “I've thought about it, and I just don't believe I want a romantic relationship with anybody.” Daniel looked at her for a moment. He could tell the conversation wasn't easy for her either. “All right,” he said. Cindy looked down at her coffee. “I don't want to hurt you.” “Well, my feelings are gonna be hurt,” Daniel said honestly. “I'm not gonna lie about that.” “I know.” “But I'll be okay.” She nodded. After a moment, Daniel asked, “Can we still be friends?” Cindy shook her head. “No. I think we need to keep it professional.” Daniel was quiet. She continued. “You do your job, and I'll do mine. We're both in positions where we have to be careful. I don't want anything to interfere with that.” Daniel nodded. “You're right.” “If we see each other at work, we'll be cordial.” “Hello and goodbye?” “Exactly.” Daniel smiled. “I can do that.” Cindy looked down at her coffee. “My first love is cats anyway.” Daniel chuckled. “I figured that.” She smiled faintly. “And I guess my first love is dogs.” “I suppose that's true.” They finished their coffee. There wasn't any anger. There wasn't any shouting. There wasn't even much sadness spoken aloud. Just two people accepting something that neither one of them could change. When Daniel walked outside that evening, the Alabama air was warm and heavy. He stood beside his car for a minute and looked toward the Tennessee River. He thought about Cindy. He thought about his wife. He thought about loneliness and love and how sometimes a person could come into your life without ever really becoming part of it. And he realized something. Not every person you care about is supposed to stay close to you. Sometimes the kindest thing you can do for somebody is let them go. The next morning, Daniel saw Cindy in the hallway at Browns Ferry. She was carrying a folder under her arm. “Good morning, Cindy.” “Good morning, Daniel.” And they kept walking. A few days later: “Good afternoon.” “Good afternoon.” That was all. And somehow, that was enough. Cindy went back to managing a nuclear power plant, and Daniel went back to his office, his paperwork and his responsibilities. And somewhere after work, Cindy would still be looking for the feral cats she had promised herself she'd never forget. And Daniel would go home to Mr. G., who would probably greet him like he had been gone for six months instead of eight hours. Their lives went on. Not together. But without bitterness. Because sometimes love isn't about getting the person you want. Sometimes it's about having enough respect for them to accept the answer they gave you. And sometimes, in the quiet spaces between one person's life and another's, that's as close to love as two people ever need to get.

A Life In Motion: Looking Back From 64

When I look back now, at 64 years old, widowed and living in Bowling Green, Kentucky with my Australian Shepherd dog Mr. Jude, it doesn’t feel like a straight line. It feels more like a long road with a lot of turns I didn’t see coming — but each one mattered. It really starts back in Hernando High School in Mississippi, where I graduated in May of 1982 as senior class president. I didn’t know it then, but that early responsibility — being involved, being present, being trusted — was going to follow me for the rest of my life. But even before that foundation fully formed, there was another quieter thread already being woven into my life. In 1980, I lived for about six months in Savannah, Tennessee with my sister and brother-in-law. That’s where my sister first introduced me to the Catholic faith in a meaningful way. It planted an early seed — something I didn’t fully understand at the time, but something that would stay with me. From there, I went straight into the University of Mississippi in Oxford, where I attended from 1982 to 1987. Ole Miss wasn’t just college — it was a defining chapter. I joined Sigma Pi fraternity, Beta Mu chapter, where I served as pledge class president my freshman year and later as treasurer my sophomore year. I also worked with the Daily Mississippian as a reporter and entertainment editor which shaped the journalist in me more than I realized at the time. And I was involved with Campus Crusade for Christ, where faith, service, and purpose started to take deeper root. One of the most powerful experiences of that time was KC83 in Kansas City, Missouri, where 27,000 college students gathered under one roof. The event featured speakers such as Billy Graham, Christian author Josh McDowell, and Bill Bright, who was the founder of Campus Crusade for Christ (Cru). From there, students went into surrounding neighborhoods working alongside outreach efforts and the Salvation Army. That experience left a lasting impression — faith wasn’t just something you talked about, it was something you lived and carried into action. Somewhere in those Ole Miss years, I met Patty when I married her in April of 1986. Faith continued to grow in the background of life, but it became more personal and intentional when Patty came into my life in 1986. She became the one who helped deepen that early foundation my sister had planted years before. Together, we began attending St. John's Catholic Church (Oxford, Mississippi), where my faith began to take clearer shape in daily life. After college, life shifted quickly. Patty and I moved to her hometown of Russellville, Kentucky in 1987. For about six months, I worked as a sports writer for the Logan Leader-News Democrat. That was a return to journalism in a small-town setting — covering local sports, people, and community life. During that time, our Catholic faith continued through Sacred Heart Catholic Church (Russellville, Kentucky), and it became a steady part of our life together. When we later settled in Bowling Green, we became members of Holy Spirit Catholic Church (Bowling Green, Kentucky), and have remained connected there since around 1988. I was confirmed in the Catholic faith in 1990, and I have remained faithful and active in the Church ever since. From Russellville, we moved to Bowling Green, where a long stretch of working life began. I went into life insurance sales with Commonwealth Life Insurance, based out of Louisville, working through the Bowling Green branch. After that, I worked for Kentucky Central, headquartered in Lexington. That job came with a lot of training — a week in Louisville staying at the Brown Hotel, and another week in Lexington at the Hyatt, with classes at Kincade Towers. It was structured, intense, and built around learning how to serve people through something as serious as financial protection. After that chapter, I stepped into what I’ve always considered my dream job — working for The Daily News in Bowling Green, Kentucky. There I served as a reporter, book reviewer and news clerk. It brought me back to journalism in a deeper way — not just covering stories, but shaping them, editing them, and living inside the rhythm of a newsroom again. It felt like coming home to the work I was meant to do. After that period in journalism, I transitioned into pest control — first with Orkin, where I spent 11 years. That career took me all over the Southcentral Kentucky, including training schools in places like Atlanta, Georgia. It was hands-on work, long hours, travel, and steady responsibility. You learned discipline quickly in that field. After Orkin, I moved into Ecolab, which brought another chapter of training and travel — including flying up to St. Paul, Minnesota for training at the Ecolab tower. There was lots of training also with Ecolab that seemed to come with classrooms, airports, hotels, and new faces — learning, always learning, adapting, always adapting as well as the strict demands of taking care of the customer. Altogether, those years across Orkin and Ecolab became about 27 years in pest control and service work — a long stretch of providing for my family, building stability, and staying in motion. Somewhere in that life, my son Tony was born in Mississippi before we moved to Kentucky — another anchor point in the timeline that changed everything about what mattered. After retiring from that long 27 year pest control career in 2021, I didn’t really stop working. I began working part-time at Walmart as a door host in asset protection. I’ve been there going on almost five years now, minus the time I stepped away to care for Patty. That period of caregiving — about 20 months as her full-time caregiver — is one of the most defining parts of my life. Nothing in all those jobs, schools, or travels compares to that time. It changed how I understand love, responsibility, and presence. Patty passed on May 1, 2025, and that absence never really leaves the room. It just becomes part of the quiet you learn to live with. Now, I live in Bowling Green with Mr. Jude, my dog and man's best friend and companion as they say, and I fill my days with work, walking, writing, and karaoke. Singing covers on social media isn’t about performance — it’s about expression. It’s about keeping something alive inside me after loss, after change, after all the miles. And looking back across all of it, I’ve come to believe something simple but steady: that everything in life happens for a reason and a purpose. Even the hard things. Especially the hard things. The good and the bad both teach us something if we’re willing to see it. Sometimes life feels like a road where you hit a dead end, have to turn around, and find a different path — learning along the way what fits and what doesn’t, and learning patience in the process. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve also learned that wisdom might be one of the greatest gifts that comes with time. Not because life gets easier, but because you begin to understand how to carry it. You learn how to deal with crisis, stress, disappointment — and still keep moving forward. That’s one of the quiet gifts of retirement, too. After decades of working, traveling, training, and responsibility, there’s something meaningful about finally being able to slow down, breathe, and reflect. To rest the body and quiet the mind after years of motion. Of course, I miss Patty deeply. That kind of loss doesn’t leave you — it just becomes part of who you are. And as for the dating world, it feels like uncharted waters at this point in my life. Even after a year as a widower, I don’t think I’m fully prepared for that chapter yet. There are people I care about, people I find myself drawn to, but I also understand that timing matters. I try to trust that God knows what’s ahead, and I’m simply trying to walk in His will for whatever comes next. When I put it all together — Hernando High, Ole Miss, Savannah, Russellville, Bowling Green, journalism, insurance sales, pest control, caregiving, Walmart, and everything in between — I don’t see separate lives. I see one continuous journey of learning, working, loving, losing, and growing. It wasn’t a straight road. But it was a meaningful one. And I’m still walking it.

Seeing Kiss And Def Leppard At The Bridgestone Arena With Patty in 2014

Some nights just stick with you forever. Patty Smith (my late wife) and I headed to Nashville to see Kiss on their 40th anniversary tour in July of 2014, with Def Leppard opening. I could tell Patty was worried about her knee — she had that big brace under her shorts — but we were ready for a night of rock and roll. Little did we know how perfect the night would turn out. An usher noticed Patty having trouble with the stairs and came over. “Go to the ticket booth and tell them I sent you,” he said. Next thing we know, we’re moved down front, probably 25 feet from the stage, low level, right off to the side. Perfect view. Perfect timing. Small acts like that make a huge difference. It made me think back to the first Kiss show I went to — the Love Gun tour back in the late 70s. Nobody I knew in North Mississippi cared much for Kiss, but I loved them, so I went by myself. People would say, “Kiss sucks,” but I was blown away. Fire, smoke, lights, hydraulics — I’d never seen anything like it. And years later, I got to meet Paul Stanley here in Bowling Green when he did his book tour. Told him about that first show, and he said he appreciated it. Gave me a fist bump, posed for a photo — and I still have that picture. Back in Nashville, Patty laughed the whole night. I think she felt like she was at a circus. Kiss was doing their thing, fire shooting, Paul flying across the stage, and Def Leppard opened with that energy — the song “Animal” just hit perfectly. Patty smiled, laughed, and carried on like she’d never seen anything like it. She loved it, and I loved seeing her that happy. That night wasn’t just about the music. It was about laughter, joy, and being together. About small kindnesses from strangers and perfect timing. About sharing a moment that we’d never forget. And even now, when I hear “Animal,” I’m right back there in those seats, watching Patty completely caught up in the magic. Some nights are just for the soul. That was one of them.