I have heard Jesse McReynolds called the iron man of bluegrass. He is certainly one of the strongest and most innovative musical talents that I have ever known. From the first time as a youth that I looked up on the stage of the Lavonia Bluegrass Festival at he and his late brother Jim, I […]
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 […]
When considering the monumental shows of television, one of these would have to be the series “M.A.S.H.” starring Alan Alda and a cast of hilarious character actors who seem to face an endless stream of war-time horrors with levity and courage. I remember sitting with 130 million other Americans on February 28, 1983 as the […]
Have you ever known need? Have you ever been hungry and not known where your next meal is coming from? While I have been blessed not to know this sense of desperation, I have seen the face of despair in many and heard stories of desperation from years past. I was recently standing at a […]
Some say it was a coal mine cave-in. Others say it was the fever, but whatever the reason my Grandpa Harve found himself orphaned in a time when if children were lucky some relative or caring neighbor took them in. I don’t know much about his childhood, although I am told his tales of life […]
I was out watering the yard a while back when a blonde headed boy rolled up on his blue mountain bike and asked if we needed our yard mowed. Our yard had just been covered with a brand new batch of fescue sod. I told the boy it was not ready to cut just yet […]
America’s music – bluegrass continues to grow in its popularity with new generations picking up the mantle of decades of evolution of the music that grew from the Appalachian sounds that gave it birth. There are over 80 million listeners of bluegrass in the United States with millions more around the world, there are over […]
Throughout history, God has used many ways to send messages to us, angels, Moses, Jesus and others. I find one of his most interesting messengers is the weather. When I was a child, I once appeared at a little Church of God tucked into the suburbs of North Atlanta, Ga. This particular evening a guest […]
God has blessed us with so many things in this world. For a columnist like myself, who spends so much time writing stories based upon the experiences and memories of things and people I have known, the memory is of tremendous importance. I imagine that is true of most everyone.
The recent scenes of flooding in Nashville and the earnest efforts of so many music stars to reach out and help spurred in my memory a close up picture of similar devastation. In the early 1990s, Albany, Ga. endured the worst floods it had ever seen, affecting thousands of the residents, destroying homes and taking […]
