Some 40 years back, an Alabama woman of great interest to me agreed to visit my family at our Massachusetts home. Getting her to say yes to the visit was part one of my worries. Part two was where on earth would I ever take her around my neck of the woods?

There I was, some 20 minutes from the Bunker Hill Monument, Old Ironsides, the Paul Revere house, the Old North Church, Lexington and Concord, the House of Seven Gables and the Massachusetts shoreline, wondering what around there would ever hold her interest.

Thankfully, I don’t panic at playing host anymore. A long career in the news business has taught me that almost anywhere has places of interest, especially if you’re open to exploring them.

So a visit last weekend from my youngest daughter, her husband and my wife — she’s still living in Louisiana, for now — had me trimming down the list of places of interest. Where to go, starting from The Port Arthur News?

We started by driving past the address where Robert Rauschenberg, the iconic modern artist, lived in Port Arthur. It’s an empty lot these days, but my youngest daughter, who teaches art in Shreveport, Louisiana public schools, was undeterred. We drove past the lot at 2721 17^th St., then drove by the former Church of Christ where his family attended at 1601 Sixth St.

From there, it was a short hop over to the Babe Didrickson Zaharias marker, just past DeQueen (God save DeQueen!) Elementary and near Rose of Sharon Baptist Church. The Zaharias marker rests in an empty lot, as well, but who’s not interested in the origins of the greatest female athlete ever? My son-in-law, a sports fan, was.

From there, we scooted over to the Museum of the Gulf Coast, specifically to see the Rauschenberg gallery — for this month, it includes “Barely There,” a Rauschenberg creation held in private hands for half a century and previously unknown to the wider public. The gallery, much of it arranged by the artist himself, includes original pieces and rare prints.

But no one leaves the museum without seeing much more. This visit included a brief tour of the exhibits on Floor No. 1 and of a visiting collection of life masks of blues music legends by Sharon McConnell-Dickerson of Mississippi. They’ll remain until Saturday. It included stops at the music section — “Mark Chesnutt is from here?” my son-in-law, a huge country music fan, asked — and the sports hall of fame.

Two hours, of course, is not enough. To carefully comb through the museum would take days, which is why my wife and I hold a couples membership.

Saturday afternoon Mass weighed heavily on our minds, but our trip from the museum to there included a quick stop by the seawall to watch a passing tanker and a ride to Janis Joplin’s old home on 32^nd Street — photos by the plaque were a must — before we traveled up nearby Ninth Avenue toward Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church and Shrine.

The church interior is lovely but the lure of the shrine was what took us there — it was my daughter’s Mass choice. The 17-foot bronze statue and the nearby statute of St. Juan Diego are brilliant from the roadway, more moving still in the monument’s shadow.

Oh, what we didn’t see: a litany of must-stop sights — the Gates Library, Pleasure Island, the Tex Ritter home, museum and gravesite and more but that will have to comprise itineraries for future visits. With this tour “tick list,” I was able to impress my important visitors — who is more important than family? — including my beloved bride, that Alabama woman who was enthralled with her visit to Massachusetts four decades, four children and two grandchildren ago.

Playing tour guide — there are a lot of opportunities to do that in a history-rich community like this one — can change your life.

Ken Stickney is editor of The Port Arthur News.