A lifelong state of mind
Carol Pappas, editor and publisher
I remember the first time I held a fishing pole in my hands. My daddy had loaded us up in our old 1957 Chevrolet, and we headed to nearby Lake Purdy on the outskirts of Birmingham. We all sat along the bank, Daddy baited our hooks with wiggly little worms and patiently taught us how to cast.
I remember how it felt to grip a cane pole tightly in my tiny little fingers and gently toss the line – hook, worm and bobber a few feet from my bankside perch. I must have been four or five at the time.
I remember my dad helping this squealing little girl land a bream. I, of course, thought it was a whopper. In reality it probably wasn’t much bigger than the tiny little hand that still held a vise-like grip on that cane pole, fish dangling from the end of the line.
It was on that bank – more years ago than I care to admit – that I first fell in love with lakelife. It’s a passion I thankfully never outgrew.
I suppose I came by it naturally. My father was born in a town in northern Greece with a lake as its centerpiece, its heart – Kastoria. I saw photos of it over the years, heard his stories of growing up there and dreamed of one day seeing it for myself. I did, and it was even more breathtaking in person than the well-worn photos I saw as a child.
Through high school and college, I joined friends who were lucky enough to have “weekenders” on Logan Martin Lake, and I dreamed of having a place of my own on a lake one day.
My first journalism job out of college brought me a step closer to that dream. It was in Pell City … returning me to Logan Martin Lake, where I
spent a handful of spring weekends and summer days as a teenager boating or working on a tan on someone’s pier.
A couple of jobs later and still in the same area, I moved up through the ranks at my newspaper and was finally able to afford my dream – my own full-time lakelife.
Today, marks the realization of another dream, creating a lakelife experience in the form of a magazine to be shared with others. It’s called LakeLife 24/7® for a reason. It’s really a state of mind, a lifestyle, an experience you never want to let go of – much like that white-knuckled grip on that cane pole decades ago.
Once you experience lakelife, you know what I mean. You don’t want to let go. You don’t want to leave. You ask yourself, what’s better than lakelife? And the answer comes without hesitation: LakeLife 24/7, of course!
That’s our aim with this new magazine and its multimedia components – to create a comprehensive lakelife experience you’ll want to savor and share. In the pages that follow, online at lakelife247magazine.com, in electronic newsletters, in video and on social media, we hope to create a community of Logan Martin and Neely Henry ‘lakelifers’ on this stretch of the Coosa River.
It may be two different lakes, but we are inextricably tied together by a common bond,
a shared love affair with the water.
Welcome to LakeLife 24/7®! It’s how you want to live – a day, a weekend, all the time. Jump in.
The water’s perfect!
