I rolled down the hill head first, it wasn’t the first time that I gotten myself in a scuffle with the other boys at school. But this one seemed to be tougher to overcome than most. You would think a peaceable person such as myself wouldn’t get into scrapes with other folks, but I often found […]
Fear is something that hides deep within each of us as we walk through life. I remember as a child, as many of my fellow youth gleefully looked to getting their first bicycle, within me was a sense of dread. I was comfortable with the tricycle and the insecurity of falling and losing my balance […]
Life is something that we should cherish with every passing breath. Often times we do not appreciate the simplest things like the feel of cool breeze on a hot summer day; the taste of a fresh glass of homemade lemonade so cold that the outside of the glass drips; the deep red color of a […]
Reaching lifetime goals often means it is time to reformulate your life and create new goals. As time passes, these goals seem to race by like fence posts but each one is a marker I look on fondly. I reached a career goal in 1993 that I had pursued since I was a little child. […]
Often in life we find ourselves looking at the calendar and it fills us with emotions of an occurrence on that date somewhere in our past. On some occasions it is a good memory or emotion. My grandmother’s birthday still sticks in my head for some reason although to the best of my memory, we […]
There were several things that folks could depend on in the valley below the Gravelly Spur Mountain, one was that the cool clear water of the Frog Leg Creek trickled its way from the springs upon the mountain and flowed crystal clear throughout the valley insuring that no one went without the liquid of life; […]
One of the more interesting characters I have met in my life is my second cousin twice-removed Rufus A. Doolittle. No matter how many times the family removed him he just kept coming back. If you meet Rufus on the street, he will always have on his old blue Bibb overalls covering nearly 300 pounds […]
Sometimes in life we have a sense of foreboding, a phone rings and we know there is bad news on the other end of the receiver. Do we pick it up and find out the feeling is true? If we don’t, we will never know. If we do and it’s not what we expected, we […]
The sounds of banjos and fiddles have kept my heart singing since childhood. From jam sessions to stage shows entertaining thousands, America’s music has charmed people around the world. One of the greatest stalwarts to forge the genre was the late Dr. Ralph Stanley, who I had the great honor to perform and record with. […]
Click, click, click, click, emanates from my sneakers as I walk along the hiking path ever hopeful that with each passing mile I am a little more fit and well on my way to losing the few pounds I am seeking to shed. After opening boxes, and pulling jeans up only to find they will […]
