Never Far From Home...

I've wandered...I've roamed. I've lived in 4 cities including college and I've always found myself back where I belong...Home.
My book (Harry Kalas Saved My Life) is about that journey and what home really means...especially when you hit hard times and really need your home.
My home is like no other. We're a different breed, we Philadelphian's and while we get a bad rap around the country for Santa's a snowballs, we are fiercely loyal to those we love...and for one of our own.
Which is why, regardless of how well received my book has been everywhere else in the country, it is my hometown that has been the most thunderous in it's applause and open with it's heart. And it's why I truly can say "There's No Place Like Home". I wish I had never left here and I wish every day I could return. Because Nashville is a bad place? No! Nashville is a great town. But it's not home. When your wheels have come off and your life is in the spin cycle and you can't tell up from down, what you need is home.
This has been a remarkable ride since April 12th when I did my first interview and this all began. I have talked to so many great people in the last 2 months but when I got here and did Angelo Cataldi's show and then Ukee Washington on CW3 and then last week when the legendary Stan Hochman wrote a review that landed my book on the front page of the Philadelphia Daily News...dreams do come true even if they have their genesis in a nightmare.
I read Stan's article today and I was in tears. I cry a lot when I think of what I've lost and what I've learned in that process. Sometimes I can still feel the cold of that car and the hopeless feeling that would have had me believeing I would never escape my situation.
I would never want to go back to that period but I wouldn't change it if I could. I am a better man than I was and I have become the man I was put here to be, doing the job I was meant to do. That is priceless.
Along the way the immeasurable blessing of becoming friends with legends has been bestowed on me. To have spoken face to face with Stan Hochman, Angelo Cataldi, (my friend of 15 years who graciously wrote my foreword) Paul Ladd who has a love for "old school" journalism like few men his age, Michael Barkann who delivered the awful news about Harry's passing that fateful afternoon in April of 2009 through tears of his own and with a voice that fought him just to choke out the words, has been a dream. To meet up-and-coming stars like Brandon Kamin and to renew an acquaintance with "The Prof" Glen Macnow, to sit on a TV set with Ukee Washington and sing songs in a dressing room with Skip Denenberg. I was interviewed by Ron Barr and had lunch with Pete Weber. To finally meet Vince Papale and swap books with him and to count Tony Luke Jr. amongst my friends is a blessing in the truest sense.
I know full well that all I have lost in my recent situation will be...and is being...replaced by something better, deeper, and more meaningful.
Almost all of it is coming from the streets and scenes and familiar feeling of my hometown. When you are miles away it sings to you and gives you a smile. When you are lost it shines a light that gets you where you really need to be. When you are there...you feel like you never want to leave again.
Home truly is where your heart is, and for me...it's the place I was born.

Everything is possible...with High Hopes!