#Ville April 29

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If you live in the south you realize we have a preponderance of towns and cities with names ending in “VILLE”.

There is a lot of speculation on the internet on why so many VILLES. Reasons offered up include that much of the south was acquired from the French during the Louisiana Purchase and VILLE means town. Another explanation is that VILLES refers to village. I am not sure what to believe but where I reside in Robeson County (NC) none of the largest towns are titled with a VILLE. We do have Proctorville with its less than 200 residents so we are not totally exempt.

My wife and I just completed an 8 day road trip today. The decision to travel was based on a number of factors including I graduated from COVID College, we were both fully vaccinated, we wanted to visit our oldest son and his wife in Tennessee, and finally we wanted to live out one of our retirement goals, which was to travel. Our travel itinerary has been dubbed by us as “Vacation VILLE”. We visited NashVILLE, LouisVILLE, JeffersonVILLE IN and KnoxVILLE. We even spent one night with a great friend and retired university professor at Middle Tennessee State University who lives in SmithVILLE TN.

We learned that today in America there are “Help Wanted” signs up everywhere. Real estate is soaring in each place we visited. That wearing masks is really adopted on the various college campuses we visited. Really enjoyed walking around Tennessee Tech, Western Kentucky, and Tennessee State.

Our trip was fantastic. In eight days we drove 1,500 miles, toured eight universities, and ate at some pretty interesting places including a KnoxVILLE restaurant called Wicked Chicken. Our son Geoff happens to work there along with being the Executive Chef at another eatery called Harvest. In Louisville I had the best cheeseburger of my life at a place called 80/20 @ Kaelin’s. In JeffersonVILLE IN I drank a beer at a brewery called Upland that had a fantastic view of the Ohio River and the Louisville skyline

In NashVILLE we toured the Parthenon, soaked up the ambience of Music Row, went to Antique Archaeology, visited our nephew Brandon’s speakeasy establishment called Attaboys, and enjoyed the campus of Vanderbilt University. We also caught up with one of my wife’s best friends from high school Gail Vaughn Ashworth who is a successful attorney, and toured Belmont University.

I LouisVILLE we walked across the Big Four Bridge over the Ohio River to Indiana, did a bourbon tasting at Angel’s Envy, toured the Kentucky Derby Museum, walked around at the University of Louisville and Bellarmine University, and took in all the connections to the sport of baseball because of Louisville Slugger.

Traveling on our VacationVILLE thru North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and a small part of Indiana we encountered a lot of interesting VILLES but more importantly lots of interesting people.

Can’t wait to visit some other places that end with VILLE.