We exchanged pleasantries with our new neighbor the other day after her dog initiated a meeting. I asked the woman where she’d moved from.“We came from The Island,” she replied.
Images of some southeastern island off of Georgia or the Carolinas came to mind (after images of Gauguin had subsided), but I kept mum. I’d just learned from my husband that “The Island” might not be as exotic as I imagined.
My lesson was delivered at a local gas station. My husband was adjusting something under the hood of our car when a woman approached him and asked if he could take a look at her car. She said she’d just moved here from Paris and didn’t know where to take her newly purchased malfunctioning vehicle.
“Paris? Which arrondissement did you live in?” asked my husband, thrilled to discuss the City of Light with an expat.
The woman answered with blankness, cuing my husband to realize she hailed from Paris, KENTUCKY not France.
Likewise, it stood to reason that “The Island” could be closer to home than it sounded. So I asked. “Where is The Island?”
Turns out it’s a piece of land in the middle (or alongside) a water retention area—not far from our ’hood.
We have much to learn about our new land.
This is part of an ongoing series regarding my transition from the Land of Lincoln to the Bluegrass State. For a list of previous articles in the series, type Stranger in a Strange Land into Lull’s search function on the right.
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