"Check Another One off The Bucket List "

Simply Put

Last month I wrote about my bucket list. I got the idea for a bucket list from a recent movie that I saw called "The Bucket List." The movie is about two older fellas that come up with a list of things they want to do before they kick the bucket.
Hopefully it will be awhile before I kick the bucket, but I came up with my own bucket list. Things that I want to do and places that I want to go while I’m still young enough to do them. As you read this column I’m on one of my bucket list trips as my family and I have traveled to the Central American country of Nicaragua. While some of the locations on my bucket list like Key West and the Grand Canyons are travel hot spots, Nicaragua is probably not at the top of a lot of folks preferred travel destinations.
So why Nicaragua? Well that is easy. My wife’s father was from Nicaragua and that is where she lived when she was a young child. You might wonder how a Jackson County boy marries a girl from Central America. It is an intriguing story complete with local flavor. My wife’s father was a pilot in the Nicaraguan Air Force and came to train at Graham Air Force base in Marianna back in the 50’s. While here he met a young local girl name Patricia Griffin. Her parent’s family had moved to Marianna some years earlier from the metropolitan area of Gap Pond in Washington County. Gap Pond is south of Wausau, home of the world famous Possum Festival.
So this young Nicaraguan Air Force pilot fell in love with this young Marianna girl. They got married in the Graham Air Base Chapel, which is still used as a Chapel for Sunland. They moved to Nicaragua and had four children, with my wife being the 2nd oldest.
If you know much at all about Nicaragua, you know that it is a country that has had its share of political turmoil, including civil wars and revolutions. My wife’s father was tragically killed in the early stages of a revolution that would ultimately result in a communist take over of the government in 1979.
My mother-in-law found herself widowed in a foreign country with four small children. She eventually returned to Marianna to live and raise her four children. The end result of that, at least for me, is that I met the young lady that I married in 1986.
We’ve always wanted to go to Nicaragua but for a variety of reasons (political, family and finances) we’ve never pulled the trip off. My wife has not been back since 1977 and has yearned to return to her homeland. So we made our minds up to go and have made the journey south of the border. So, Simply Put, check another one off the bucket list and Adios Amigos.

From the front porch: Coach said that a good sport has to lose to prove it.