Dirt Roads, Family, and A Crush Worth Remembering

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The dust of the dirt road rose around my sneakers as I walked from Aunt Lockie’s house.

My Aunt Lockie—my maternal grandmother’s sister—was one of a kind. To call her “unique” would be an understatement.

She had a gift for finding fun in any situation.

When I was a child, my mother made a point of visiting her regularly.

I looked forward to those trips, not for the parlor conversations, but for the moment I could slip outside to play.

The summer heat always felt thicker there. Her yard brimmed with flowering bushes where bees hummed busily.

There weren’t any toys or playmates, but I never minded. My imagination turned the quiet yard into grand adventures: I was a swashbuckling pirate aboard the Bounty, a Confederate soldier dodging Yankees in the Civil War, or a GI evading Germans in World War I.

The older folks often gathered in the evenings, swapping faded stories of those conflicts—tales passed down from parents, uncles, and siblings. The actual veterans rarely spoke; some pains, it seemed, were not meant to be relived.

I’d play until I was drenched in the happy sweat of childhood, then burst back into the adult world. “Can I have a quarter?” I’d ask, already eyeing permission to walk to the country store for a Crush. On occasion the request would prompt a group walk but this time it was just me.

That store’s electric chest cooler was a treasure chest. You’d slide back the heavy lid and peer into a frosty sea of glass bottles—every flavor imaginable: Orange, Strawberry, Peach, Watermelon, Lemon-Lime, Blue Raspberry, and more. The real adventure was picking one you’d never tried.

After paying, I’d pop the cap on the counter opener, step outside, and settle into the shade.

A Crush wasn’t for gulping; it was for savoring, like discovering a new favorite song.

Around me, neighbors chatted over their own bottles, swapping local news and the events of the day.

The store felt less like a shop and more like a big, open-air living room.

Once the bottle was empty, I’d return it for the five-cent refund, then spend the rest—plus whatever remained of my quarter—on a candy bar. Zero’s were my favorite. I loved the white fudge covering and the chewy caramel insides.

I’d kick up dust with the white soles of my sneakers all the way back, savoring every bite.

If my timing was right, my parents would be wrapping up their visit just as I returned.

We’d pile into the car while Aunt Lockie stood in the yard, waving until we disappeared from sight.

She lived to be a centenarian, but what I remember most isn’t a list of facts—it’s the easy comfort and love I always felt around her.

That warmth stayed with me into adulthood, surfacing whenever I had the chance to sit and pass the time of day with her.

Some people don’t need many words to leave a lasting mark. Aunt Lockie was one of them.

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Solitude and Connection: How Do We Find Our Balance?

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For better or worse, I have spent roughly a third of my life in my own company.
Of course, you’ll say we all do that. What I mean is only my own company. My days have been filled with me pursuing my goals and doing whatever I felt would be productive.

One might call that lonely. At times it feels that way, but by and large those moments are fleeting. The hours are consumed by activity—striving toward physical, creative, or career goals. It is nice, however, to have someone to talk with about what you’re doing. Those people are usually our closest friends or family members. Finding someone who truly fits that bill has always been difficult for me. My family maintained a great deal of privacy, and that is still our way.

It may sound like a contradiction for someone who has spent so much of his life in public roles—as an actor, entertainer, or public servant—but I have always tried to guide my steps with balance. Only a few people have ever brought me to the point of raising my voice, and they were almost always immediate family members or a long-term girlfriend who had become like family. Even then, I rarely initiated conflict. I never liked arguments; I saw them as a waste of energy that rarely helped accomplish the task at hand. Sometimes, though, the other person simply has a “mad on” and needs to get it out. In those moments you can either absorb it quietly or respond in kind.

As an actor I’ve learned that conflict lies at the heart of drama. It’s what keeps audiences glued to show after show and movie after movie. I know how to portray theatrical conflict convincingly—because I’m paid to do exactly that. In real life, however, my walk is smoother when I engage with others in a civil and logical manner.

According to my beliefs, we pass through this life only once. I would rather spend it making strides toward goals that benefit both myself and the world around me. I want to uplift others, to keep learning and growing, and to create artistic work that moves people. These things give me balance. Everyday tasks can still tilt me off center—they often feel tedious—but they are necessary steps toward the larger goals.

Is life better without solitude? I would say those blessed with a strong family are tremendously fortunate, even when that blessing brings intense moments of fellowship (and friction).

Would I trade what I have for it? There are days I miss the large, noisy family that once surrounded me. As time passes and more of us are gone than remain, the daily walk grows a bit harder. The void is filled with friends, but even those relationships can thin with the years.

My advice is simple: start early. Build a strong immediate family that cares for one another. Strengthen ties to blood relatives and keep them close. Cultivate lasting friendships—remember that to have a friend, you must be one. Even those of us who walk with God as our constant companion benefit from having people we can reach out and touch. They are not avatars on social media. They are flesh-and-blood souls who share the journey.

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When Life Tries to Steal Your Blessings – Strive

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Throughout my life, I have experienced both moments of extreme happiness and the depths of depression. Circumstances, relationships, and sometimes our own decisions can push us to either end of that spectrum.

Early in life, I often looked to others to make me happy. Not that I couldn’t find happiness on my own, but having someone else to focus on seemed to make it much easier. Their worlds, thoughts, and hopes gave me a welcome change and the chance to experience new things, which brought a sense of happiness. This pattern, however, also created codependency that would devastate me whenever those relationships ended, swinging me to the opposite end of the spectrum.

After working through those periods and realizing this was not a healthy way to live, I began developing my own internal “happiness meter.” It allowed me to find simple pleasures in the things I enjoyed—without everything revolving around other people.

In many ways, my blessings became the places, the activities, and the memory-making opportunities. The companions were still important, but they took on a different role. They were no longer the center of what I was doing; instead, they were fellow enthusiasts who simply enjoyed the same activities, places, or events.

Happiness can be found in simple things. It doesn’t require big, elaborate trips—the kind I once thought were necessary. Real joy often comes from completing a project, improving one’s health by reaching a new physical goal, learning new skills, or discovering fresh opportunities to explore.

If you know me, you know I love fiddling. It has been at the close to the center of my life since I was about eight years old. I love hearing and watching other players, being around fellow musicians, and most of all, performing with my fiddle. Sharing my time and energy to uplift the tradition brings me great happiness—whether at a regional fiddle contest, a concert, or special events like the Grand Master Fiddler Championship, now held at the theater at The Factory in Franklin, Tennessee in September, which I have hosted for 18 years, or judging at the Smithville Jamboree in Smithville, Tennessee.

Though the hours can be draining, exhilaration always comes from the activities, the music, and the people.

No matter what your joys in life may be, the old devil can try to steal the very blessings that bring you uplift.

Recently, while headed to Smithville, my reliable old Explorer decided it wasn’t going to make the trip—about halfway there. On a holiday weekend, I found myself sitting on the side of the highway in over 100-degree heat, trying to figure out what to do next. After about 40 minutes, I arranged for a wrecker service from back home to tow the vehicle to a local garage. A good friend then dropped everything to drive me to the airport so I could rent a car. After loading my belongings into the rental, I went home, changed out of my sweat-drenched clothes, and got back on the road. I arrived only five hours later than I had originally planned.

The event itself went beautifully; we managed to work around the heat and sporadic rain. Toward the end of the second day, however, another challenge appeared: an unexpected storm drenched my merchandise table and ruined a significant amount of inventory.

It would have been easy for the breakdown, the anticipated costs of the tow and repairs, and the loss of merchandise to leave me angry, sad, frustrated, and short-tempered with everyone around me. But that didn’t happen. I stayed in my place of blessing and refused to let the old devil steal my joy, no matter what he sent my way.

You can control where your mind goes and how you react. This trip could have been miserable, but I chose to make it anything but. I shared wonderful conversations with old friends, heard amazing music, and watched talented dancers. I even had an interesting conversation with the tow truck driver during the roughly hour-long trip back home.

Making the best of a bad situation can keep your blessings intact and thwart the enemy’s attempts to steal them. I wish that for you always.

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When the Bucket Returns: Childhood Pranks

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I remember as a child, especially when the family gathered, there were always more children than you could shake a stick at.

When you put a bunch of boys together, they often got into mischief—usually by playing pranks on each other. Sometimes they would even gang up and pull one over on some of the girls in the group.

Sometimes that mischief involved a bucket. It could be filled with water, ice, dirt, worms, or anything else someone might not enjoy having poured over their head.

Of course, it was all in good fun, and the favor was soon returned in full measure when one least expected it.

Sometimes adult life brings similar moments, when it feels as though fate—or something else—puts you squarely in the crosshairs of a bucket filled with the unimaginable. It may not be as messy as those childhood pranks, but it can feel just as heavy when it lands on your head.

As children we knew the rules: get drenched, howl with laughter, and wait for the perfect moment to strike back. But these adult buckets don’t come with a return policy. Once they’re emptied over you, you’re left standing there wondering how to dry off when the water keeps coming from somewhere else.

For me, this past week felt exactly like that. I would wake up to a message or a call and feel the first cold spray hit. By mid-morning another drop would land, then another, until the whole week felt like standing under a faucet someone had forgotten to turn off. Even the good news from earlier in the month now felt strangely distant, like sunlight I could see but no longer feel on my skin.

After some wonderful, uplifting moments I had long chased and desired, each day that week brought news of another passing—first two musical friends, then a cousin and a coworker, then another musical friend, and finally a musical hero.

Each one chipped a little more paint from my surface, leaving my life a bit more exposed and my emotions raw to the touch.

When life turns on a dime and the hopes and dreams of what lies ahead are suddenly sidelined by an unexpected death, it’s sometimes hard to understand how one day everything can be on the right road and the next the path disappears into the fog and haze of grief.

Maybe the work isn’t to find the old road again, but to learn how to walk through fog without needing to see the whole path at once—trusting that the next step will eventually become visible, and that someone else might be walking it with us.

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Edward Uptegrove: A Virginia Patriot Story

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Among the earliest German settlers in Pennsylvania were a Mennonite group known as the “Original 13” families. This included three brothers—Derick (Dirk), Herman, and Abraham Op den Graeff—who arrived aboard the ship Concord on October 6, 1683. They helped found Germantown (now part of Philadelphia) and, in 1688, signed the Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery—the first organized religious protest against slavery in the colonies.

It was Isaac Vanbibber Op Den Graeff’s son, Edward Uptegrove (also spelled Updegrove or similar), who was born around 1739 in Pennsylvania. He married Sarah Lewis, and together they had at least six to eleven children, including Isaac Uptegrove (1761–1817); Susanna/Susannah Uptegrove (1760–1840), who married Benjamin Melton in Albemarle County in 1787; Hannah Uptegrove (1770–1854), who married Elisha Collins in Albemarle in 1794; Solomon Updegrove; and others who later simplified the surname to “Groves” after moving to North Carolina.

In the mid-to-late 1760s, the young family migrated to Albemarle County, Virginia—a rapidly developing Piedmont frontier region of rolling hills and fertile river valleys. Still largely rural and agricultural, the county was transitioning from wilderness clearings to established plantations and small settlements, with Charlottesville emerging as its new courthouse village.

As murmurings of revolution grew, local leaders—including a young Thomas Jefferson—organized resistance. In 1774, Albemarle County held meetings opposing British policies. In spring 1775, following the Gunpowder Incident (when Virginia’s royal governor Lord Dunmore seized colonial gunpowder in Williamsburg), the county formed an Independent Company of militia. Roughly 155 volunteers (later growing to nearly 300) marched toward Williamsburg to demand the powder’s return or compensation, though they turned back before any major confrontation.

Local men also enlisted in Virginia Continental regiments, such as the 14th Virginia, which fought in major northern campaigns like Brandywine and Germantown. The county supplied recruits, provisions, and militia musters. Edward likely first felt the Revolution through committee activities and musters in the mid-1770s, with demands increasing by the late 1770s.The war arrived physically in 1778–1779 with the transfer of thousands of British and German (Hessian) prisoners captured at Saratoga. Starting in early 1779, the Albemarle Barracks (near Charlottesville along what is now Barracks Road) housed up to about 4,000 prisoners. This placed a tremendous logistical burden on the rural county, bringing economic activity, security concerns, escapes, and constant interactions with the community as locals supplied food and guards.

Benedict Arnold’s British invasion of Virginia in late 1780 prompted the Virginia legislature to relocate temporarily to Charlottesville for safety. The county remained relatively quiet on the battlefield until June 1781, when Banastre Tarleton’s raiders struck Charlottesville itself, aiming to capture the legislature and Governor Jefferson. The raid brought direct combat, property damage, and chaos—partially thwarted by Jack Jouett’s famous nighttime ride.

At the height of Virginia’s crisis, Edward stepped away from raising his young family to answer the call. As a private in the Albemarle County militia in 1781, he joined thousands of everyday Virginians who shouldered muskets to defend their homes. That pivotal year, traitor Benedict Arnold’s forces torched Richmond, while “Bloody Ban” Tarleton’s cavalry threatened the heart of Albemarle. Local militia scrambled to protect families, supplies, and the prisoner barracks while supporting the broader campaign that funneled British troops toward Yorktown.

Though no single battle bears Uptegrove’s name, his service embodied the quiet resolve of local defenders whose vigilance helped secure victory at Yorktown in October 1781. He returned to civilian life but died by 1785, leaving a patriot legacy recognized by the Daughters of the American Revolution (Ancestor #A117995).Uptegrove’s story reminds us that the Revolution was won not only on famous battlefields but also in county militias across the land. His descendants spread across the frontier, carrying pride in Edward’s service and instilling that commitment to country in generations to come.

Edward Uptegrove is Randall’s maternal 6th Great Grandfather.

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