Only time for a short walk yesterday, but I had a destination in mind: the Scott Hotel, once owned by my grandfather and great uncle. Mom and her family lived at the hotel intermittently through the years, sharing quarters with the horsemen and the tobacco farmers in to sell their crops. 

The hotel was right across from the Southern Railway Depot, a natural place to stay for a night or two if you were in Lexington on business.

It was a less likely place to house three young daughters and a son. But these were different times, harder in some ways, easier in others.

The hotel is abandoned now, has been for years. It stands in mute testimony to those long-ago lives.