Where I Stand -- Brian Greenspun: It's all in who you know

THEY SAY you can't go home again. I say that depends upon where -- and with whom you are going.

Myra and I took a quick trip to the Kentucky Derby a few days ago. It was a homecoming of sorts because many years ago Louisville was a temporary home for us when I was stationed at Fort Knox. When we went back for the first time since those very early days, not much had changed. The food, of course, was significantly better, but the inability to get much sleep remained a major part of life in Louisville. The first time I was there I bet my life on my ability to drive, shoot and command big tanks. This time around I learned that betting on the horses was an equally daunting task.

What convinced me, though, that the quality of the return trip home depends almost exclusively on the company you keep was the way that Kentucky, all of it, turned out to welcome one of its own, Dan Chandler. Dan has been a fixture in Las Vegas for longer than most people can remember. His employment resume reads like a pedigree from many of the best hotels in town as competitors vie for that quality in some folks that makes others -- we call them gamblers -- flock to their sides. This time the Las Vegas Hilton has him, and he proved his mettle from Versailles to Frankfurt to Churchill Downs and back. I went along for the ride because as long as I have known Dan I have never been able to take him up on his most gracious invitations to "come see the way we do it in Kentucky." Saying yes, finally, was the best thing we could have done.

I can't tell you how the tens of thousands of other tourists who raced to Kentucky for the grandest of all thoroughbred events stayed, but Myra and I were treated to a piece of Kentucky and U.S. history that only Dan could have offered. We were guests at what Dan's father, former Kentucky Gov. Happy Chandler, called the "cabin." It is really a guest house next door to the Chandler family home in Versailles (unlike the French, the word is pronounced "ver-sales") which has been converted to a bed-and-breakfast that Dan claims "hasn't made a dime" since he became the proprietor. That cabin has as much history packed into it -- on its walls, on the floor and crammed into boxes not yet unpacked, if ever they will be -- to rival the viewing pleasure of a good part of the Smithsonian. But you have to like baseball and politics in order to enjoy it properly.

When he wasn't the governor of or senator from Kentucky, Dan's dad was the commissioner of baseball. In fact he was THE commissioner of baseball because under his watch and at his insistence and dogged determination, the integration of Major League Baseball began. It was through his efforts as the leader of baseball that Jackie Robinson got his chance, and the meeting that made it happen took place in that cabin in Versailles. There are reminders of that meeting and its aftermath all over the walls, crowded only by a pictorial history of Kentucky politics.

That's the life that Dan Chandler was born into and it is a life, I suspect, that could have been his had he chosen it. But Dan is a different kind of person who took a different path. His idea of fun, frolic and friendship is every bit as solid as his father's was, but his ability to not say what's really on his mind -- to hold his tongue, or at least temper it to a fine point -- was, at best, lacking. But that's the quality that his friends all over the world like most. Dan is not afraid to tell the truth.

Going home with a man like Dan is a treat. I don't know if people from Kentucky are any warmer or friendlier than they are in Las Vegas, but that weekend it sure seemed that way. At least when it came to meeting and greeting Dan Chandler and his friends. There is always that bit of nostalgia and resulting respect for his father, the man who mentored half of Kentucky's political and business elite, but after a while that fades and what is left are people -- even sons -- standing on their own two feet. What I witnessed was Dan standing very tall and his friends standing taller as a result.

It is said that living forever in the shadow of a fabulous father offers great security. If that is true, moving out into the sunlight requires a good deal of strength and courage. As Dan moved through the crowds at Churchill Downs, it was clear to me that he had moved into the sunlight, enjoying both the security of the shadows and the warmth of friendships that were his and no one else's. And if there were any doubt before, there could have been none after trying Josephine's fried chicken.

For more decades than most of us have been alive, the Kentucky political season has started the day after the Kentucky Derby. That's when the "ins," the "outs" and those who would like to try for either show up to strut their stuff. And where else does the show begin than at the Chandler cabin? The reason is twofold. Politics is one and fried chicken is the other. Now I don't know how long Josephine has been whipping up her incredible chicken recipe, complete with all the down-home fixings, but I suspect she started when she was a young woman and Dan's father was a very young politician. Today she is well into her 90s and going as strong as ever, although she admitted during a moment of weakness that she's starting to get a bit tired! Well she's entitled.

But the fact that she continues to cook for dozens of Kentucky's finest on that most important day of the Blue Grass political year is a tribute to the man who carries on the tradition, Dan Chandler. And Josephine is the kind of character witness we'd all like to have, not to mention her incredible chicken.

So, Dan, if the offer still stands for next year, count us in. I can't imagine a better way to "go home again" than with the man who knows the way!

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