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By Bobby Ross Jr. | Religion Unplugged
MIDVALE, Idaho — I’ve reported from most of the nation’s largest cities.
New York. Chicago. Los Angeles. Houston. Washington. I love covering the news in such important urban centers.
And I’m not just talking about music, although I certainly enjoyed the Grand Ole Opry when I worked in Nashville.
My earliest memories take me back to southeastern Missouri’s Bootheel, where both sets of my grandparents lived.
My brother, sister, cousins and I played hide-and-seek amid rows and rows of taller-then-us corn stalks. We couldn’t avoid the stench of the monster-truck-sized hogs that a neighbor raised in a cesspool of mud and slop.
We savored ice-cold Grape Nehi soda in a glass bottle that we bought at a tiny store down the street. That same store sold bologna sandwiches for a quarter and bags of candy for a dime.
A half-century has passed since those days, but I still treasure them.
A reporting trip to middle-of-nowhere western Idaho got me thinking about that time — and about the speck-on-the-map places that chasing stories takes me.
This column appears in the online magazine Religion Unplugged.
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Faith. Family. Fastballs. 