Nikki Key - Louisville actress, host, web video, spokesperson

There are moments in life that take your breath away.  Mountaintop moments as I like to call them.  Big accomplishments, realized dreams, long sought after goals finally achieved.  Moments well documented with photos, newspaper articles, and great fanfare – even if it’s our own mothers doing the cheering.  We live for these times.  And then the goal is accomplished, the item checked off the list, and guess what, God’s places a new dream in our heart and we’re off again chasing down the next goal.

I have my own bucket list.  A real, actual list.  I date and check off items when dreams are realized.  I have so many things I want to achieve I actually have a bucket list per decade.  I’m hoping God grants me a long life because there are so many desires and dreams he’s placed in my heart and mind. But as I was going through drawers preparing for an upcoming move, it made me think about life in general and the time between the mountaintop moments.  Time passes so quickly and if we’re not careful, a month has turned into a year and a year into a decade in the blink of an eye.  As I started reminiscing and going through photos and newspaper articles of past accomplishments, I am, of course, proud of those achieving moments, but what put a smile on my face were all the smaller memories associated with these moments and those random, seemingly insignificant memories during the in-between time.  The times that aren’t documented with photos, but have put an enormous smile on my face, sometimes even greater than the mountaintop moment itself.

My life began in Cairo, Illinois.  My mom lived in Cairo until her early thirties when our family moved to Kentucky, and my maternal grandparents lived their entire life in Cairo.  Even my maternal great-grandparents, all four of them, lived their adult lives in Cairo, Illinois.  So you can imagine the warm feelings and love I feel for this town.  I will always cherish skipping rocks at the river, the Mississippi River, with my Granddad and going for milkshakes at the Dairy Hut.  For anyone who has never visited this small river town, there is so much history.  Among my favorite spots include the Custom House, Magnolia Manor, Riverlore, and the Cairo Public Library.  Cairo was at the epicenter of racial riots in the late 60s and never seemed to recover from the turmoil and upheaval the town experienced.

This article was just published about Cairo, Illinois in Time Magazine.  One of my family friends and former resident of Cairo, Sara Rust, located and passed it along.  Few people know that Cairo, Illinois had the highest per capita of millionaires in the early 1900s.  Opera houses, hotels, and beautiful mansions were all part of this prosperous town.