Something weird has happened to me when I take my wife on trips. An odd and often overwhelming sense of nostalgia fills me.
This sentimental longing for the past, with positive feelings of emotion and even happiness, is happening more frequently. Only this year did I start noticing how it is becoming an emotion I increasingly feel.
For years, I had viewed nostalgia as something old people do when reminiscing. Am I now old? Is this why nostalgic feelings are happening more and more often?
Or is it because I have been alive longer and have more memories of the past, and seeing something that reminds me of an event or something rekindles fond memories?
Did I not just define nostalgia?
Am I rambling? That is another thing old people do, isn’t it?
Last Thanksgiving, I was going to visit Cincinnati with my wife and daughter. A family member experienced a life-changing moment, and we had to cancel our trip to stay behind and help as much as we could.
Things have settled down since then, and a new normal has begun. I have been trying to get back to Cincinnati to cross the river into Kentucky and finally have Kentucky Fried Chicken in the state it was founded in. Once again, life got in the way, and a second trip to Cincinnati was cancelled.
I started to think that I would never have real Kentucky Fried Chicken from a Kentucky KFC. However, I succeeded in having authentic Kentucky Fried Chicken during our March Break trip, while Trying Not to Freeze to Death While Camping.
We enjoyed KFC in its founding state at the Harland Sander’s Cafe and Museum. This was a place that filled us both with nostalgia.
Wow. We both must be getting old.
Here we are in Kentucky, at a restaurant that once housed the start of Colonel Sander’s fame, where various displays of KFC’s history, the Colonel, and the rise to world-famous, finger-licking good fried chicken were on display. Charlene and I would walk through the restaurant/museum and spot things from our past, such as a particular logo design on a chicken bucket, a toy that was once offered, or even various menu options that were once served. There was a video showing Colonel Sanders prepping chicken where I was waiting for him to be horribly maimed by hot grease. It didn’t happen; he knew his way around a kitchen.
Nostalgia.
Weird.
But if I felt so good experiencing this emotion.
It was such a positive experience being in this location and seeing things from our past, all about a restaurant we have frequented many times throughout our lives.
At the end of our tour, we stopped and ate some chicken. It was as good as every other KFC, but we were eating it at the start of the legend of Colonel Harland Sanders.
- The museum is free to enter, and there is no obligation to purchase from the restaurant.
- If you begin to feel nostalgia, you are getting old.
- View my favourite map, All The Places We Have Been to see where this location can be found.
