My sister, Kathy, and I own McStatts' Printing in Cartersville, Georgia.  We are the second generation owners of this family business that our parents started in 1968. 

Our parents, Anthony and Alice McStatts, retired in 2004 and when they retired, we along with our younger sister, Tammy, purchased the company from them.  2 years later, Kathy and I bought Tammy's portion.  Growing up as a "printer's kid" had its advantages and disadvantages.  We always had plenty of things to play with when we stayed with our parents at the office.  We lived at the office more than we did in our home because my parents worked very long hours to get the business started.  We have been in the same location for the last 40 years and it is a 5000 square foot building.  Growing up, my sisters and I had one-third of that space allocated as "our side".  I am the middle child and I am 5 years older than Tammy and Kathy is 5 years older than me.  On "our side" we had bicycles, a big wheel, a large grocery shopping cart (I have no idea how we got the shopping cart), roller skates and numerous toys. And in the back of the building, we had a basketball goal and a small swimming pool that we would put together year after year.  Some of my fondest memories as a child were playing on "our side" and swimming in the Scooby Doo pool behind the building.  One of my favorite stories is when we moved our Scooby Doo pool from the outside to the inside of the building.  We had just returned from vacation, and had stayed in a nice hotel that had an indoor pool.  We LOVED the hotel's indoor pool and just thought it would be so neat if our pool back at the office could be an indoor pool.  So that is what we decided to do when we returned from our vacation.  We emptied the pool and disassembled it and moved it to "our side" and put it back together and filled it up. After a couple of days, we could not understand why it was so cold and not warm like the indoor pool at the hotel.  Of course, we didn't realize at the time that the hotel pool  was "heated".  I asked my dad years later why he allowed us to move the pool inside and not tell us that it was not going to be warm like the hotel pool, and he said that he wanted us to find out on our own why it wouldn't work.  I have many more stories like this that I want to share with you.

Until next time...

Anthia