A Happy Tear

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As we travel unique roads in life, it is sometimes saddened by the fact that those that travel along with us eventually step off the path.

They can simply follow a different route, taking the path of least resistance, or they may choose a steeper climb.
Sometimes they find a life peril that they cannot overcome.

Either way we look at life, it includes comings and goings. People enter our lives sometimes for a season, sometimes for years. Then one day they are no longer on the journey with us.

This time of year for me brings those absences closer to my mind and gives me more of a desire to reflect upon happy times past.

As we look deeply into our minds eye, those folks who made such an impact upon us are often among those that are absent.

I found the other night as I tried to find sleep, my head turned on the beige cotton pillow case while making an a dent in the heavily stuffed pillow. No matter which way I turned my head, or my body, the gray matter inside my head just kept churning out images from across the years. The moments I saw made me exceptionally happy. Childhood games of play, college dates, and moments that shaped who I am.

All of these filled my head so, I couldn’t find sleep, so eventually I just got up and watched TV until the movie I was watching lulled me to sleep.

Despite the respite of sleep, the next day the images remained flashing in my thoughts. I found myself welling up inside not understanding really why. My body was doing it, just on its own course.

The tears flowed down my check as these people who had meant so much in my walk were visible to me again.

The longer God blesses us with time, the more people will flow in and flow out of our adventure. Some reach so down deep within us, that we are left with a huge hole inside when they are gone. Those holes never really fill, they are just left along the roadside. But from time to time, a smell, a photo, a place brings an artesian spring to life from the bottom of those holes and the water finds our eyes and a few drops drip out upon our cheeks.

For most, the tears of sadness long ago emptied, and those that now flow are happy memories, tempered with some amount of missing.

This time of year, though I am ever mindful that men are not suppose to cry, it seems I do run up on a few more artesian springs dripping on my cheeks from time to time as I have at least in my mind looked back down the path at those left behind, on another road or raised beyond my reach for now.

I pray that any waterworks in this time of year which come to you are underlined with a happiness that once was and hope for what will be.

May 2025 be a year of amazing opportunities for all of us.

Don’t miss your window

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You know everything we do in life has a period when it is best by.

Marriage, children, working life, education and so many other of the things we do, are often set best in certain periods of our lives.

I have missed a lot of windows in my life, I will be the first to admit. Some of those misses, as time has passed have brought regrets and sadness. But life comes and goes as we plan. Living it at the moment in time when we are existing is probably the best path for all of us.

I recently spent the day doing what my folks have done for generations. Possibly not to the annual extent that we once practiced, since that meant we had something to eat all the year long.

That was harvesting, canning and freezing greens of various types.

I have always loved eating greens with a bit of fatback for seasoning and a piece of cornbread on the side. A meal is made of them.

I will have to admit my efforts were not as efficient as they could have been and I lost a lot of greens simply due to timing.

I didn’t have the time needed to press through all the greens, cook and process immediately. Thus, I lost several pounds of greens to turning and wilting over the subsequent days since the cutting.

Despite the delay, I am only one person, so there is only so much that can be accomplished while trying to keep life afloat.

But I will know next time to make sure I have adequate time to dedicate to the effort.

When I was little, the process was swifter, there were many hands, making the work lighter.

The cooking and processing were done as they came straight from the garden with no time to spare.

I can still see my grandmother’s iron pots lined up on tripods above a burning fire in the yard as each crop was processed for canning.

Even though it was several days of work, each crop went fast, because everyone focused their efforts on that and filled the root cellar for months to come with that vegetable. Then they moved on to the next one.

You couldn’t wait or you’d miss the window of goodness. Whether it was beans, corn, greens, beets or any other crop, they got our full attention.

So, for everything we pursue in life there is a window of goodness – when it is the best time for that life experience to come to pass. Now that doesn’t mean we can’t go to college in our eighties. I have known several people who accomplished degrees at that point in life. That also doesn’t mean we can’t get married, have children later in life, if biologically possible, although it does often require more energy than afforded to keep up with the responsibilities associated.

As it is said to everything there is a season, and as I worked through my step back into the process of canning and freezing greens, it reminded me, we must make the time to do what is needed when its required or we will loose part of our crop.

The same is true in life. We must make the time to do what we want during the window when everything is good for that purpose. Don’t miss your windows in life, once they are closed and painted shut, it’s hard to get them open again as time goes along.

Don’t jump to conclusions

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We are all blessed with the faculties of mind endowed by our creator to allow us to reason.

Now some folks, as my late mother would say, stood behind the door when God was giving out good sense, and that would also expand to reason.

I have seen people all my life faced with situations and they jump to a conclusion and pull folks into their prejudice or the negative Spirit within them based upon their life experiences.

Without evidence they gossip about someone or accuse someone of something that offends them in some manner.

We find these kinds of folks in all walks of life, those can inhabit our work place, our church, our school but especially these folks live to type on social media.

There is no repercussions for typing away whatever one assumes about someone.

Sadly, families are sometimes the worst hive of folks that jump to conclusions about someone they are suppose to love. In some cases, the love is suppose to be unconditional. That circumstance is generally within one’s immediate clan. The extended clan gets a bit of grace because they are removed from the unconditional assumption, but the benefit of the doubt is still expected. Blood is thicker than water as they say.

What is it we lose when we jump to a conclusion without evidence and then act upon it. It usually results in hurting someone’s reputation, or their feelings, or both. Depending on how serious these things are, it could also impact them financially, socially or even legally.

Because we have the ability to move the world with our words and our Spirit pushing upon other people’s, we must be cautious of what we say about others and the conclusions we draw based upon a set of circumstances.

Now, that does not mean we should not reason with the evidence we see to protect ourselves and those we love, it just means, we should not rush to judgment and speak upon someone publicly unless we know beyond the shadow of the doubt that the evidence we have seen is conclusive. Even then, is it our job to be the spokesperson of this news?

Did God make us His orator? Or have we taken it upon ourselves as a gossiper? Does telling the story bring us joy or excitement? Then we may not be God’s chosen orator.

If he has chosen you to speak ill about someone in any situation, that is something that you will not want to do. In fact, you will desire not to do it so much, you will avoid it. You will only do so, when you have no other choice.

As children we all learned to jump rope in some fashion. Some of us excelled at it and were able to even rhythmically jump while rhyming with great speed. While many of us enjoyed seeing or participating in this play, we all had the good sense to only join the activity if we were capable of not getting our feet caught in the rope.

We should use a similar approach to jumping to conclusions. Make sure you have the ability not to get yourself or someone else tripped up on what you tongue might be saying about your conclusion.

The lights of the season

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I climbed up the stairs to the attic and in a way it did reflect the season, as all throughout there was a covering of white. It was insulation instead of snow but it did put thing in mind, as I crawled around in the space finding the boxes with Christmas decorations.

I would hand them down one by one to my mother or dad in alternating fashion as we prepared to begin the annual tradition of making the homestead more festive.

The boxes would pile up in the living room as each one awaited emptying.

We had foregone real trees for the an artificial years before. I was tasked for placing each branch in its appropriate hole in the trunk and shaping it.

Before long it would be ready for ornaments, lights, icicles, and eventually the star on top.

The process went fairly fast considering it all had to come out of boxes and placed with care until it glistened and gleamed with the shine of the season.

After the tree, then came all the special additions around the house. Each table got a Christmas doily, a Christmas candle, and maybe some hand made decoration to draw the eye.

The cards would get their very own clothes line that stretched across the wall with each displayed to add to the season.

We didn’t have a fireplace, although for a few seasons, we had a brick lined box with and electric light within its hearth which would add a glow to the living room.

When the inside was just as mother wanted it, my father and I were dispatched to the exterior attraction.

Which meant all the front bushes would each have their own colored lights some flashing and some solid. A wreath of greenery with red ribbon would be added to the front door.

One of my favorite pieces that is now long lost to time was a large lighted face of Santa Claus which was always placed last hanging on a trellis of holly by our door.

Christmas in my mind’s eye is always more colorful, more vibrant and ever so more festive than each one that seems to pass these days.

Perhaps, I recall things much better than they were or I don’t recognize the beauty around me at present as much.

Maybe the absence of many who brought life so much joy dims the present over the past.

It makes a challenge in my heart that I must strive to be more mindful of those that are with us who can bring life to each and every moment of the holidays.

Use the coming season to uplift and enrich your heart by bringing joy to all God sends your way!

I’m on my way back to the old home

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The holidays always bring a sense to me within my soul. It’s a desire to go home and spend time with the family and old friends in familiar environs.

For me a peace comes over me when open horizons turn to mountain hillsides and tight roads winding between them back into the hollers. The farm houses stand upon the high points leaving what bit of flat there is for growing crops.

Smoke rises from the chimneys as I wind up through the valley to reach the old home place that sheltered our family for nearly two hundred years.

On the porch as I reach the drive are my grandmother and grandfather finishing the hanging of the greens to decorate the outside of the house.

The interior will already be filled with the smells and the vision of hundreds of Christmases – stockings on the mantle, a fresh cut tree with all types of handmade decorations hanging from the limbs.

Sadly, the vision I see today is only in my mind’s eye as the old home place is now someone else’s and the older generations that once gathered at it’s hearth are now resting beneath the family sod.

This year I chose to make my journey to my musical home place. So much of my life and mentoring came from the musical lineage of the Father of Bluegrass Music – Bill Monroe and his Uncle Pen Vandiver. The lineage is sort of mine as they both were my mother’s cousins. I was so blessed as a teen when Bill took me on to mentor my fiddling and my band leading.

So, I decided to go back to his hometown of Rosine, Ky. To visit. I was blessed in that my old friend Marty Hays and his wife Robin hosted my visit at the Bill Monroe Homeplace. The restored home has many of the aspects of the home that Bill knew as a boy. Each room offers a unique look into the warm fires that once burned in the fireplaces.

In one of his songs “I’m On My Way Back to the Old Home,” he tells a story of the Homeplace.

That today also hosts the annual Jerusalem Ridge Bluegrass Festival. I hope that you will take the time to add it to your plans for 2025. It’s a wonderful show with many of the top talents of bluegrass being there.

During my visit, I was blessed to also take in the Uncle Pen’s Cabin – owned by James Monroe, and the Bill Monroe Museum. I went to the Rosine Cemetery and paid my respects to Bill, Uncle Pen and all the Monroe clan.

To help make the visit a musical connection back to my time touring with his Blue Grass Boys, I celebrated my 40th Anniversary with a concert at the Rosine Barn Jamboree accompanied by the talents of The Rosine Sound. This talented group includes Marty Hays, Jasper Dale Beatty, Larry Hill and Dylan Lunsford. It was an uplifting show and with their help I played many of the tunes that I had shared with Bill.

Meeting the people of Rosine and enjoying the warm welcome they offered was similar to the mind’s eye vision I described at the beginning of my piece. I may not be able to recreate those days that stand in my memory, but I sure can make them over in news ways.

I encourage you, if your wishing to take a trip and find both good folks and some interesting places to see look towards https://www.ohiocounty.com/billmonroe . Learn more about my history with Bill Monroe at https://RandallFranks.com/Bill-Monroe-and-the-Blue-Grass-Boys/ .