BY SKYLER, DEB & TIM SMITH
Provided by Cardinal Sports Imaging
Hello, my name is Skyler Smith and Mendon is a very important place to me. After being born, I came home from the hospital to Mendon. It was in Mendon where I first learned to ride my bike and rode the bus to school for the first time.
My sports career began on the baseball fields of Mendon where I got my first hit. The culmination of my HF-L sports career has certainly been my participation on the Unified basketball team and one of the team’s favorite traditions is holding the team’s annual end-of-the-year party at my home in Mendon.
If you want to see a funny look on someone’s face, you should see the looks upon the faces of the drivers who stop their cars upon seeing the school bus’ flashing lights and then see 22 kids file off and cross the street to my house. One year a driver even rolled down his window and jokingly called out, “Is this a mass abduction?”
Even though I have my driving permit now, that old bicycle still comes in handy when I tour the town. And that’s what we’re going to do in this article that I wrote with Dad and Deb . . . All aboard for Skyler Smith’s Tour of Mendon.
MENDON CHILD
CARE CENTER
Wow, talk about your déjà vu! When I entered the Mendon Child Care Center I got this eerie feeling like I’d grown up in this place. Well, maybe that’s because I did. When Wendy McKinnon started her day care center 18 years ago she only had to wait about a year before she had me as a customer!
Wendy was immediately faced with some challenges before she could get her endeavor off the ground. For starters, her current space was divided exactly in half. Prior to her arrival the left hand side of her space was a packing and shipping store, the middle was a quirky oriental basket and craft store, and there was a barber shop tucked in the right hand corner. With the help of her husband John, who’s a builder, and his good friend, architect Rob Meehan, they reconfigured the space to its current design.
Wendy’s days are never boring as you might imagine with over fifty kids whose ages range from 6 weeks to 8 years. As I walked around the facility the memories came flooding back; I remembered the various rooms I transitioned through as I grew older. Yep, I said to myself, “I seriously honed my nap-taking skills in this place.” I think I see a self-help book in my writing future, Skyler Smith’s The Art of the Nap.
My Tour of Mendon will continue next week with visits to Flowers and Fountains and the Mendon Dairy Shack.
(Editor’s Note: Skyler Smith will celebrate his birthday September 25).
