Growing up in the Same House my Whole Life

Growing up the Same House my whole life

Jess and Cathy continue talking about their childhoods.  Unlike Cathy moving around every 2-3 years, Jess grew up in the same house her whole life.  9114 Darley Drive.  She even remembers her phone number. No matter where you live, childhoods are full of all kinds of experiences growing up—cousins, neighborhood friends, family activities.  They shape who we become!  Have fun listening—and how was this similar or different from your childhood?  Let us know in your comments!   Spread it out—like, follow, subscribe and send to a friend!

Theme song and host introduction. Jess and Cathy welcome listeners to There You Are, introduce themselves, and share what the show is about and who it's for.

Theme song and closing words from Jess and Cathy, including a call to action to share the episode, leave a review, and tune in next week.

Cathy is a professional at training and teaching the sport of Three Day Eventing. Her website is: 

https://www.cwevent.com

Jess is a licenced clinical social worker.  She see's clients in her office in the back of the house here at the farm.   

Her website is:

https://www.jessicabollinger.com

Transcript

jess-and-cathy_1_04-20-2026_063109 1:38

There you are. There you are. It's a Monday morning. Monday morning sitting around the kitchen table. Yep. Drinking the rest of my coffee. Maybe I should have made another cup. Oh, I can do that in 30 minutes. It's all good. Back from our back. From our 5:00 AM workout. Exactly. It was a good workout this morning. Core and conditioning. Yeah. Yeah. Which when you work on core, I'm all in for that. 'cause I don't wanna have my stomach, my big stomach anymore. It's always good. It's always good. So last week we talked about your childhood Yeah. Moving every two or three years Exactly. And hopscotching around the country. Yep. And what was cool about that is you felt like you grew up everywhere. Yeah. It was a good experience. And your yesterday was your mama's birthday. Oh, I know. April 19th. I thought about it, but I didn't post anything. And you posted something that was really sweet picture. Yeah. Miss Kitty. Yeah. She was a force. She was a force. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. Yeah. And you have some of her best qualities. Thanks. Yeah. All right. Okay. But we're gonna talk about you a little bit today. We'll go back and you grew up in one house your whole life, one town your whole life, you moved 60, 70 miles away to go to school. So you've had a really cool connection with a lot of people for a long time. Yeah. And I've lived here on the farm. Moved here in 86, so this is 40 years. Wow. In this place. That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. I do like to travel, but not be going more than a week or two. I really like being home. Yeah. Yeah. I like being home too, but I like to travel. Yeah. So I think something that came up for me I wanted to mention. That you move in every two or three years and living now in Lexington since 1978. Yeah. That you, if you come to dinner at our house, Cathy has a certain seat. Yep. Yeah. And I think that, don't sit in my seat. Yeah. I think that comes from okay. This is where I am. And I don't have to move from this spot. Exactly. Uhhuh. Yeah. Don't you think that has something to do with that? Probably. I don't know. There is something about, this is mine and even if it's, this is my chair and my spot at the table. But I think that comes from having to work so hard for. Everything that I did competition wise and owned and never feeling like I ever had enough money. 'cause I was putting it all into the horses. So I think it's almost like an ownership thing versus a moving around thing. That's what's coming up for me when you're talking about that. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Back to you. You keep back to me. Keep throwing it onto me. It's about you to this time. Okay. Okay. I was born a small white child. No. Oh, that's from the movie, the Jerk. Yeah. Yeah. So growing up, I my dad built this house. Okay. Just after my sister was born in Tenbrook subdivision, my dad got into building and developing when he graduated college at uk. He. Discovered that he could be an officer, like your dad was an officer, right? 'Cause he had a college degree. My dad was told that if he joined the Air Force, he joined as an officer and he could go to Dayton and not have to move around. So my dad joined the Air Force and then That's right. Air Force Base and Dayton. Yeah. Wright Patterson. Paton. Yeah. Quite right. You're bloody well, right? Yeah. And he then he said, Hey Jackie, come up here and marry me. Oh, how sweet. Yeah. Yeah. And my mom and she did. My mom said yes. Her mom wasn't too excited about that. And sent somebody up to get my mom's car when she found out my mom had eloped. Oh, wow. And that person went up and got my mom's car. So to bring it back? To bring it back because your dad had a car? No, because she eloped and they didn't my, my grandmother b didn't really want her to do that. My mom was an only child. Okay. Yeah. One of my dad's, one of my dad's fraternity brothers was George Martin. Okay. And George Martin was there at the University of Kentucky on the GI Bill. He'd already, he was a little bit older than my dad. He'd already been in the service and then came back to the university. Okay. And George had gotten into the building business. And dad and George had gotten close. And so while dad was in Dayton, dad was in conversation with George and found out that okay, I wanna try building a house. And through his dad, my, my grandpa, he was able to buy a lot and be able to get a little seed money to take a loan. And build this house. And he ended up building two houses up there in Dayton. Oh wow. Cool. Yeah. And that's what got him in the building business. Got him into the building business. Yeah. Then my mom my mom had told me that dad got an offer to go to New York City and work, work in some kind of finance. Business and they decided, no, we wanna move back home. So they moved back to Louisville and my dad proceeded to continue in the development business. And he developed this piece of property on Westport Road and called it Plantation. And that's where the pool was and everything, right? Yeah. My dad was one of Nine kids. Okay. And. My grandpa would tell all nine kids if I had another kid that I have one that could do something, so my dad adapted. Nice message. Yeah, it wasn't really nice. No, I was being facetious. My, my dad, that's a word for my dad and my Aunt Helen are telling me this story and my aunt Helen's laughing and she says we would laugh at Daddy and say your chances are pretty slim after nine kids if you still don't have one that could do something. If he had another one, they probably wouldn't be able to either. So quit trying. I tell this to all my clients. I repeat this story a lot and have a picture in my office of my dad. My grandpa had a pest control business called Bollinger Kill All, and they would mix DDT and chemicals up at the kitchen table. And there's a picture of my dad. On the right and my grandpa's in the middle. And Robert, a black guy that worked for them worked with them is on the left in the picture. My dad's kneeling down in front of a big tub of big old rats, like long rats I hate. And my dad's holding up a rat by the tail. Yeah. My dad's got a gas mask on. My dad adapted to that message. 'cause we want, we all need to feel safe and feel loved. And we adapt and do whatever we need to do to feel safe and feel love. Yeah, my dad adapted and started working for my grandpa when he is five years old and my dad was little and could get underneath crawl spaces and stuff like that and put chemicals down and spray and do powders and all this kind of stuff. Bless him. So my dad started working hard when he was little. My grandpa. Had these room houses. Okay. And my dad was born in 29. Okay. That was the year of the stock market crash. Then there were like six kids born after him. Times were tough. My, my grandpa would scrape enough money together and buy some rooming houses, and then he would give one of the kids a rooming house to take care of. Oh, okay. And then they would be responsible for sweeping the halls, patching the roof, and collecting rent on Fridays. My dad at a young age was given a lot of responsibility. One of the, one of the things my grandpa was doing was saying like I don't own these. My child owns this. So my grandpa didn't have to pay taxes. My dad ended up later on in life helping my grandpa with an attorney help. Yeah. Overcome this large tax bill that he had avoided. Anyway, so that's how my dad started working hard. And that's what I was around. Yeah. And while I was growing up I used to dream that my dad worked for International Harvester, like my uncle Joe Tichenor, and would be home at five o'clock every day. Oh, wow. Yeah. Because my dad would get home late or Yeah. Whatever. Yeah. Anyway. Back to you growing up. Yeah. Yeah. You digs. So growing up, yeah. So my dad had built this house and my sister Jamie is 18 months older. I think my mom had trouble getting pregnant. And then they, and then my, as my sister says, she's a chosen baby, right? Takes great pride. And she was selected and not just like me thrown at my mom, yes. I have this beautiful sister named Jamie, 18 months older than me. And they planted a pine tree on Jamie's first Christmas there at that house, Uhhuh. And this thing just got huge. So anyway, I grow up and something that brought us together, Cathy's horses, and I had this little girl love of horses. And I would draw pictures of horses and draw a picture of a stable, like what the plan would be for the stable. I guess I got that kind of like drawing plans right? From my dad. Yeah. And when I was about five or six years old, we rented a pony. For about half a year. And that Pony's name was Babe. And we had Was that like a lease or did it live on the property with you or, yeah, it lived behind the house. Behind the house? Yeah. Okay. We had a little fenced in yard behind the house. We lived on three and a half acres. Oh, okay. There was a field next to the house and we had this little fence around the house. Okay. My, a little lean too was built against the house and that was babe's. Little shed. Sweet. Yeah. But I would. I would lay down and rest my head on Babe's stomach when babe was laying down and my mom would tack up babe and lead me down the hill. Oh, sweet. And this neighborhood, Tenbrook was, all the houses had, pretty many acres. Some people had 10 acres. Okay. And. And some people had horses in the neighborhood, so it wasn't like a super packed in subdivision with Uhuh, no. Barely room on each side to bring your garbage in and out. No, we had a lot of space. It took a long time in mow the yard. My mom would tack up babe and lead me down the hill because the maybe the. The Worthingtons had a little arena down at the bottom of Darley Drive, and then I would ride around in the arena and after we got this pony, a funny story is everybody's all excited that Jesse's got this pony, and I have 32 first cousins and all of my aunts and uncles all ended up having a house except for us in Plantation. Plantation subdivision. Okay. Plantation Subdivision also had Plantation Country Club, which was a pool with a 32 and a 16 diving platform. My Aunt Babe, the oldest girl of a family, married this man named Ralph Wright in California. He was in the Marines and he was a notable swimmer, and he swam underneath the Golden Gate Bridge when it was opened in San Francisco. Wow. He had some other swimmers and he discovered. The he started the, that swim, stroke. The butterfly. Butterfly, yeah. Yeah. Wow. You can look up Ralph Wright and the Natatorium, that's the swim place for the University of Louisville. Is called the Ralph Wright. Wright. Oh, cool. Natatorium. Anyway, he got Plantation Country Club going with these big swim teams that competed nationally and internationally in the Olympics and stuff, so it was pretty wild. I didn't really swim. My sister swam. All my cousins swam. So this big to-do is Jesse's got this pony and so all the family shows up and grandpa and all these kids, all these cousins all show up. I remember this. This curfew or whatever in the backyard, right? And the pony's tacked up and I get on the pony and my grandpa smacks babe on the butt. And this pony takes off. Takes off. And just like you go, flying 30 yards. Ow I come off, and then the Pony's running all around the neighborhood and everybody's chasing the pony to try to catch it. And anyway, I just loved I had the bite of loving horses. My sister and I would beg mom for riding lessons, and we took riding lessons. And then, but you started doing riding lessons, the saddle seat or whatever, right? Is that Yeah. I would ride wherever. Wherever you could. Wherever I could. Okay. Wherever I could, whatever. And when I was 11 I wrote this letter to my grandparents. Yeah, I've seen this letter and the letters hanging up. The letters hanging up in our kitchen. We might read it to you sometime, but it's I'm, I typed this letter to B and June to ask them. To get me a horse. Not that they have to actually get me the horse, but try to talk my mom and dad in to get me a horse. So that's a, it was a really well written, persuasive letter. That's pretty amazing that a little 11-year-old row, 11-year-old wrote this. Yeah. Yeah. That All I want to do is for you all. To see me and I'm waving at you while you're sitting at the arena and I'm trotting around with the blue ribbon in my mouth. Yeah. It's very persuasive. It's, it ends up the following march. I get Jesse James. Yeah, he's an American saddlebred. I'm taking lessons at Rock Creek Riding Club. At the time it was at a, it was a saddlebred place. And I get Jesse James, a general pleasure horse. I compete him a little bit, but I get Jesse James. Yeah. That's awesome. And it ends up miraculously that I have Jesse James when I moved to the farm when I'm 27. So how old was he then? So he was like 19. Okay. No, excuse me. He was 24. Because he died five years later when he was 29. Yeah, because he died when I was here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, I moved to the farm in 86. I have a I just had given to me Calumet Prince, the horse that had an injury on the track and, I had the transportation people pick up CAE prints up in northern Kentucky, and then they went to the farm where Jesse James was boarded, and then we came to the farm. That's awesome. Together. Awesome. Both horses and my dream, because I was friends with Nell Pierce Nell Pierce Bradley now. Thanks Nell for, this is Nell took me to an equestrian event. Called, Hey, penny Horse Trials. It was at Masterson Station Park, and I just fell in love with the venting. Yeah, that's the first time you saw eventing then. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. And now it was in pony club, like you were okay. In Anchorage, Kentucky. Yeah. And but anyway, like I said, when I was growing up, I would draw plans of what the barn would look like, what color horses I'd have, and what type they'd be. That's so cool. Stuff like that. I could just, just imagine it. And then when when I got outta college in 1980, December of 1980 and then opened up the market in June of 81, then I was at the fruit market working there, 14 hour days and so forth, driving them, driving the truck to the terminal in Louisville. But I boarded my horse. Okay. So I brought my horse to college. Great. That's cool. Took my horse. I went to University of Missouri my first semester of college in Columbia and shipped Jesse James out there. And I didn't continue playing basketball 'cause I wanted time with my horse. The coach at the University of Missouri, 'cause we won the state basketball championship and I was a pretty good basketball player. Yeah, and I got some letters from different universities and they found out I was recruit coming to University of Missouri and I got a letter from the coach saying, we practice just once a day from five to six 30, so you should still have time to do activities that you wanna do. But anyway, that's funny. Yeah. Didn't you have a conversation with them? Directly. I don't know. Okay. I don't remember. Okay. To me, Cath, I feel like I was just totally unconscious in my childhood. I don't know really? Yeah. Yeah. I don't remember details. Okay. My friend's Hemi, my friend Hemi Delbert, she remembers all these specific details, but I don't, what about Billy Kaiser? He lived two doors down. Yeah. He's, he was a big influence in your life. You talk about him a lot. And that's just it. Two doors down. And you're, I remember that was one thing I thought was so cool when we lived, like in a subdivision ish, you weren't isolated, you rode your bikes with the, you did things with kids in the neighborhood. Oh, yeah. Which I thought was really cool. I loved to do that. Oh yeah. And we always played. Billy had two older brothers and we were always playing football in his backyard and he had a basketball goal. And I would go down there and borrow their basketball and shoot baskets. Shoot baskets. One Easter. I got a basketball for Easter. Oh, wow. And then I had my own basketball. I could go down there anytime. And hopefully they didn't have a car parked underneath the basketball goal. And you can practice, practice and iPractice. Practice. Shoot, shoot, shoot. I got I knocked on, I started not feeling good one time and I knocked on the back door and Pearl, that was Billy Kaiser's mom called Pearl, right? She was married to the warden as we called him because he was a bossy dad. Yeah. Husband. Anyway. I didn't feel good. I knock on her back door and I had heat stroke. Oh, 'cause you're working too hard practicing your basketball. Exactly. Wow. Exactly. But anyway at least you were smart enough to do that and not collapse on the asphalt. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah, same house my whole life on Darley Drive, it was up on a hill, 91 14 Darley Drive. (502) 425-3743 was the, was our telephone number. Telephone number. That's when you would remember telephone numbers. Yeah. So kids in neighborhood, so Doll Paris lived down the hill and up. Tenbrook way to the right. Okay. And she was cool. She was my sister's age and I really wanted her to be my best friend. But she was my sister's age. My sister's only 18 months older and doll Paris had a go-kart. She had a horse. And she had a tree house and she had a basketball goal and her mom would make grape Kool-Aid. Her mom was Big doll. Big doll. Yeah. And her mom would make grape Kool-Aid and it, my house, we would drink out of the bathroom faucet. Yeah, because you didn't wanna make a mess. In the kitchen. In the kitchen and make my mom nervous. Anyway. Did she have the Kool-Aid and the little smiley Yeah. Kool-Aid. Yeah. Yeah, I remember seeing those commercials. Yeah. I remember saving the little Kool-Aid things. You can mail in to get one of those. Mom thought we'd spill that grape Kool-Aid on something. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. But Big Doll was cool. She was so good. She was great. Yeah. They and then. Doll had a brother named Will and Doll told me later on, will was like in love with me, but I wasn't into that. I was, unconsciously. And my mom tells me later that after I told her I was gay when I was like 23 years old, my mom says that makes sense that you had that crush on that little Nancy Brown or whatever. Nancy's last name was Nancy Ryan. I gotta look her up. I was in kindergarten at Sacred Heart Model School. That's where I went to kindergarten. Yeah, mom said I had a crush on the so girl. Oh. But my mom didn't help facilitate any of that. No. Anyway, so what else was I saying? Oh, we were talking about kids in the neighborhood. Yeah. So I really want, 'cause doll Paris ended up she was gay. Oh wow. Okay. Yeah. And we, it would've been wonderful. It would've been, my childhood would've changed. Oh yeah. And they came on our boat one time. My dad my dad, yeah. Used to do the boating every weekend. Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't get a horse 'cause we were on the river every weekend. You can't have a horse. We go on the river every weekend was what I would hear. And my dad, when he was in college, there was a fraternity brother that had a boat on the Kentucky River down near Fort Boonsboro. And my dad got on that boat and my dad says, I love this. Oh, sweet. Yeah. And I mean they were in the water a lot in Louisville when he was growing up. Oh, okay. Swimming on the Ohio River and stuff, right? Yeah. Yeah. So we always had a boat on the Ohio River and you went out some, your shoulders getting sunburned or something like that. Yeah, so growing up my mom would pack the bags. We'd go on Fridays. They had a mean, I hear a lot of families have that tradition of go on Friday afternoon. My dental hygienist does it, Friday afternoon she's happy. She has Fridays off 'cause she can go Friday down to where they have the CU boat. Cumberland probably houseboat on Cumberland Lake. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, go ahead. Yeah. So I interrupted you, my dad and my uncle Paul and Hank Zax. Had a lot on the on the Ohio River at Belknap Beach. Okay. And they built dock, they built docks there. Okay? And the boat would come out of the river and get dry docked in the winter, and then get put back in the water and then kept at that dock. And so every Friday we would pack the car and go down there and, jamie and I would be washing the windows of the boat and Friday night, Saturday night, we'd be on the river. And yeah, like I said, I had these 32 first cousins and a few of my aunts and uncles boated also. Okay. And we would go up to 18 Mile Island, and anchor and pull up, beach the boat and throw an anchor out the back and. And that would be our weekend. Okay. And that's before the Ohio River was really clean. That's before they had holding tanks on boats. And we would jump out of the water to go when somebody flush, oh, we're flushing the toilet. And we'd all jump outta the water. Yeah. Yeah. And so Billy Kaiser was two doors down. He was my age, but I. I didn't really like playing with Billy Kaiser. I just did. And Billy Kaiser and I was, one little story is we're on his stone wall that was at his, the bottom of his driveway. And we're jumping over these bushes into these le leaf pile that we made. Yeah. And like on the count of three, we're gonna hold hands and jump over these bushes. And he didn't jump and it jerked me back. Oh man. And I guess they had these fire bushes. And the sticks got the top of my lip, in between my teeth and my lip and cut my lip right there. And it was bleeding really bad. And so I went home and then Billy Kaiser went and hid 'cause he thought the police was gonna come from. Yeah, I was okay. But that's what it was. That's right. Yeah. So that's like you jumping in the pool and breaking your leg or whatever. Wouldn't you do that too? Yeah, when I was four years old. Yeah. I'm jumping in the baby pool. People, I'm watching people jump wait, here was my unconsciousness, right? I'm just watching kids jump in the baby pool and I jump and then it doesn't feel good when I landed. And then I remember hopping back to the car. And then the next day when I got out of bed, my, my sister and I had these twin high poster beds. Oh, okay. In our room, we shared a room. When I got out of bed, my leg just collapsed. And so my mom took me in and I had a broken foot. Oh. And so I had a cast on my foot. I always wanted a cast. I'd never, all the time I got hurt, it was always a bone bruise or. Something. I have the bone density of an 18-year-old. I know. That's crazy. It's crazy. Anyway, yeah. So I had a cast on my foot and I remember Cathy riding my bike in the neighborhood after it rained and I would hold my cast down and let the water spray on my cast. I was still riding my bike 'cause the cast went up to my knee and had this little rubber thing on the bottom. Oh yeah. Yeah. They put that little rubber inset on the bottom. Yeah. Yeah. So I still got around. Yeah. Anyway, we, yeah. So that it was a blessing. It was for sure a blessing growing up. Same house my whole life. And we lived there until my, my sister got her own apartment. I went away to college and my parents divorced when I was 12, but my mom stayed in the house. Yeah. I have two brothers that were born. My dad remarried, Suzie, Jesse, boy, and Andy. P and anyway, my mom stayed in that house until she remarried, and then she built a house in Peewee Valley. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. Like you say, it's all good. Yeah. It's all fun. Just, it's just interesting to hear different perspectives. And how Yeah, we can it can intertwine yet it can be completely separate. It's cool. My dad in that subdivision there was 10 acres that dad donated to the Catholic diocese and they built a church there called called Mother of Good Counsel and it had a school. Nice. So all of us cousins ended up going to our mother of good counsel to grade school. And there were four first cousins in the same class as me, myself, mary Wright. Yep. Joey Tichenor. And Dewey Bauer. And Dewey. Yeah. We were all growing up together. That's, and like I say, intertwined doing plantation or doing the doing the boat on the weekend. We're just all really close. Yeah. Which was fun and I love that. Yeah. I love being a witness to that. Yeah. And experiencing it. Joey and Yeah, Dewey and Yeah. Was really close to Dewey. We went, she went to Sacred Heart, same high school, Dewey. And then Joey we're really close with just kissing cousins, we'd say. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's my childhood in a nutshell. And the horse tank, that's just a nutshell. I was thinking when we started, I was like, we just barely scratched the surface and, but it's just fun. At least giving everybody a different perspective. Yeah. You loved you. You grew up with the horses. I loved horses that ended up bringing us together. Yeah. And we'll tell you more about that later on. Sounds like a plan. Yeah. Okay. Hey, peace and love. Have a great day. Good. Have a great week. This coming weekend is the Kentucky Three Day, which is a huge five star event here at the Kentucky Horse Park. And I got friends coming in, friends from Rock Creek Riding Club. Melinda and Ann are coming in. Exactly. And staying with us. It's always fun. Friday and Saturday night. Yeah, it'll be a fun week. Be a fun week. Good luck everybody. We love you all. Thanks so much for listening. Peace and love. And there you are. There you are. Bye.