As a child did you have a place that was your ‘thing’, something that just the mention of it would throw you into an enthusiastic frenzy of ‘lets go lets go’? A place where the name got mangled a little, part child naming, part inside joke?

I grew up in a semi-rural area, not much in the way of stores close by, the only one being a small mom and pop convenience store with a name…well, I have to say I have no idea. Somewhere along the way when I was 6 or 7 or 8, they had a big (bigger than me anyway) plastic cow outside on a trailer as a promotion. I don’t know how it happened next, but it became ‘the Cow store’ ever after. I still think of it that way when I happen to pass by. Life was simple then, each Friday our god father and next door neighbor would take us to the store and give us enough money to get a drink (Frostie root beer usually for me), a candy bar, and a comic book, or some similar combination.

So far my oldest daughter has done the naming, deciding at an early age that McDonalds was ‘Old MacDonalds’ and bouncing with excitement about a trip to the ‘pencil store’ (Sam Flax). Fun to watch how children identify places and what sticks, on a recent trip to Jacksonville we rode a small toy train and not only do they remember, they’ve got it flagged to do again so that they can ride a train car with a different color than the last time!

Lot’s of life lessons included in all that, but maybe that’s a post for another day.