The cowboy way
I have found in recent years with the barren desert I find on television I tend to gravitate towards the tried and true westerns that dominated the film screen and the television screens.
Why can’t I find you?
Have you ever went where you thought something was and when you got there, I golly, it wasn’t.
I am amazed at how this phenomena can plaque our thoughts and erode a day into loss of effectiveness.
I know I put it there. That’s my safe place. When was the last time I used it?
Did I put it back? Did I leave it somewhere? Did someone take it?
I recently was looking for an item which has little value but means the world to me. It represents an important achievement in my career and thus my life. I would wear it on special occasions.
When this happens you begin racking you thoughts as when was the last time you saw the item.
Sadly, in this case, I don’t recall. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I would have used it. The last important one was 12 years back. That’s a long time for it to sit and not be used. There had to be something since. Keep thinking man!
So, in desperation, I began the systematic review of every nook and cranny in the house.
I remove each drawer, take out every item and then replace them. As I progress through the effort, another drawer, another drawer, until I reach nine of them. I shift to the cedar chest, everything out, everything back in. No luck. Three more drawers and a wardrobe to go.
Will I find it? I’m hope so, if not, I must begin the same process in other rooms and closets.
I know, unless I did something stupid at some point in history and lost it while having it on a trip, it is within the house. I just have to keep searching.
The effort does become tiring but at some point there will be a resolution – either I will find it, or I will come to the conclusion, it will remain in the land of the lost.
In a way, this is a lesson for life that we all can draw from.
We spend much of our life looking for things. We seek someone to spend our life with, a true love.
We hunt a job that will provide and sustain our daily needs. We strive to find success in our endeavors that bring us satisfaction. We look for the meaning of life.
Do we find these things? Sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t. What we wanted remains outside our reach.
Do we keep searching for it?
I think we should never give up the search. We might take a break from the effort, but pick it up again when our mind and body is recharged.
No matter what you are looking for, the adventure of life is within the search. Once we find our goal, we tend to find yet another goal to seek. That is the nature of much of our life.
So, keep hunting, you will find it. Now, back to my drawers. I didn’t remember having so many socks. By the way, if you find a blue sock with a guitar on it in you dryer, I think it’s mine.
Writing yields thousands of words
The written word was forced upon me as a child. How many spelling tests did I endure in my early years of schooling. I was so frustrated by them in first grade they gave me my first lesson in character.
I just couldn’t seem to get the spelling into my head, so I would slip a piece of paper under my leg with the spelling on them of that week’s words.
Although I knew what I was doing was not proper, I didn’t really understand that it was cheating. I was just trying to gain approval by spelling properly. Instead, I received the life lesson of Miss Crumbley catching my efforts and I found myself standing outside the room awaiting being sent to the principal’s office where I caught a paddling. Then of course, she called my mother, and a few more licks found there way onto my behind.
I learned a lesson that has lasted a lifetime, cheating, no matter the reasoning, is not something a good person should do.
I eventually became a proper speller that I should have been all along. Amazing how a bit of a tanning gets one’s mind on the right track.
After a couple years, words from books became my constant companion. There was not a fiction or a history that did not interest me. As I grew instead of consuming the words, I began to see them flow from my pencil, pen or ends of my fingers as I typed. Eventually those words created something worthwhile. Articles that people wanted to read that appeared in a school newspaper, then organization publications, magazines and newspapers.
After a few years, they contributed to being what allowed me to construct books which have provided hours of enjoyment to readers, a creative outlet for me, and the blessings of some income.
My pastime of genealogy has provided a basis for the efforts as I have found a list of writers and poets in my tree who have shared in the same gene pool of inspirational talents. The great Geoffrey Chaucer, considered the father of English literature was one of my grandfathers. Among my cousins are names such as Clemens, Poe, Dickinson, Austen, Stevenson, Hawthorne and Ingalls Wilder. I often pray that some of the God flows He shared with some of them might find their way into my writing spirit.
My latest book has now hit the market. I embark on a new genre not non-fiction, not cookbooks, not autobiographies or murder mysteries, this one is religious as I created “Seeing Faith: A Devotional.”
My life experiences combined with the theological knowledge of seven pastors have yielded 31 lessons to fill a month or two-thirds of a year with an opportunity to find a closer walk with Jesus through the words He provided me over many years. I talk about lessons from friends in film, television, music, and people from the South and Appalachia and how they provided experiences for me which allowed me to see Jesus through them, in them and in their treatment of others. I pray the words are a blessing for all that read them.
That book is now finding its way into other’s hand and eyes and God is already providing words for the next written adventure, this time another foray into fiction, set in a Southern town with an amazing group of characters. The words keep flowing through the genes. Thank you grandfather, and thank you Lord.
Find out more about “Seeing Faith: A Devotional” at www.RandallFranks.com/Seeing-
Mountain kin makes for good music
The amazingly talented Dolly Parton is reaching out among her family and back into history for her upcoming album and a docuseries project “Dolly Parton & Family: Smoky Mountain DNA – Family, Faith & Fables” expected out in November in partnership with Owepar Entertainment.
“I cannot believe that it has been 60 years this month since I graduated from Sevier County High School and moved
to Nashville to pursue my dreams,” Dolly said in her release on DollyParton.com. “My Uncle Bill Owens was by my side for many years helping me develop my music. I owe so much to him and all the family members past and present who have inspired me along this journey. I am honored to spotlight our families’ legacy that is my Smoky Mountain DNA.”
Dolly hails from Sevier County, Tennessee, now the home of Dollywood and many others of her amusement endeavors. It is where her father Robert Lee Parton and Avie Lee Caroline Owens raised a large family including many singers, pickers and actors such as Stella Parton.
It is from the rich traditions and experiences of growing up in the Great Smoky Mountains that Dolly uses over and over again as her inspiration for her songs such as “Coat of Many Colors,” “In My Tennessee Mountain Home,” and so many others. Many of her stories in song touch on those who influenced her life like “Daddy Was An Old Time Preacher Man,” inspired by her grandfather the Rev. Jake Owens who will be featured prominently in the project.
Her first cousin Richie Owens, of Richie Owens and the Farm Bureau, is producing the project, which is said to include up to 40 recordings and a four-part docuseries.
Many of her immediate and extended family will be featured on the project going back for generations. The docuseries will include concert performances filmed at Knoxville’s historic Bijou Theater, featuring Dolly and family. The songs within the series will combine with the stories about the Parton and Owens families and their members while exploring the family heritage and lineage tracing back from the Appalachians of East Tennessee to the United Kingdom in the 1600s. Album Preorder will launch June 21.
On a personal note, I am related to both the Partons and Owens. I look forward to learn more about my extended cousins and I am hopeful and excited that the docuseries may reveal some interesting tidbits about our common grandparents in the old country and those who made the journey into the Great Smoky Mountains.
Be a connector
In this era of social media, the lives of our circle of friends and family scrolls by on our phones and tablets. Sometimes we will pause to like it or make a comment and through this we feel like we are staying connected to other people.
The reality is when we post, not everyone who are friends see it, in fact Facebook and the other social media company has structured things that way. We can have 5,000 “friends” and only a couple hundred will see what we post.
I say all that to say this…. STOP IT! This is not connection. Gaining likes and smiley faces is not a relationship with another living breathing person.
In the olden days, like prior to 15-20 years back, if you wanted to know how someone was, you picked up the phone and called. You interacted for a few minutes or longer and before you hung up you had truly connected. Some folks would even go so far as walk or drive over to someone’s house or office and say let’s go to lunch, or “Here, you got some coffee, I brought the donuts.” Then they would sit down and talk.
When I was growing up, folks often had two living rooms in the house, one was for company (living room) and the other (den or family room) for the family. One remained clean to receive folks who dropped in and the other was generally more lived in. Many folks had both a formal dining room and the a kitchen eating area.
We built our lives, our homes, our decor, expecting people to drop in for a talk, a meal, or even overnight – hence guest rooms.
This is how we connected. I have noticed that the formality of things have disintegrated over the years and now not many go out of their way for guests, in fact many don’t even bother with the old social norms of greeting folks at the door, asking them in, offering them a seat, serving a refreshment, and then just being there with them, no distractions, to just talk. When they leave, you show them out, and wave a smile as they go. In years past, there were long lists of etiquette to follow.
Today, well, folks are lucky if people even come to the door if you knock.
I have traveled much of my live passing through towns and made many friends through the years. Before we carried cell phones, if I was rolling through some where and the timing was right, I would often just stop knock on the door and spend some time with friends. I remember one time passing through Plains, I stopped knocked on the door, my friend, Miss Allie, came to the door, invited me in, offered me refreshments and we had a nice visit before I got back on the road. Being of the WWI generation, she followed all the expected Southern formalities. This trip my friends the Carters were away, so spending a few minutes with Rosalyn’s mom was a blessing and allowed me to reconnect and learn about everyone’s current status through Allie.
In my dad’s family, we had two connectors, people who managed to keep us all interwoven by regular phone calls, cards, and an outward showing of love – my Uncle Burl, who died a few years back and my Aunt Lois who left us this Mother’s Day. She was our last connector. Through her, we knew how all those we are suppose to love because of blood are doing. I realize with her death, those phone lines will no longer be burning. My weekly visit by phone will no longer occur when I got the updates on this cousin’s children or that cousin’s illness, or someone’s birthday is this week. For years I have known everything about everyone that is suppose to matter. More than I could ever glean from scrolling through social media.
That will be gone now. Our connection is cut. Now I will go through my weeks knowing less and less about family until we happen to bump into each other at a town event, store or restaurant when we spend a few moments asking about everyone and learn what’s happening. Those encounters are good but really not enough for meaningful connections.
I remember when I was a boy Sunday was visiting day. After church, we would spend the rest of the day in the car going from house to house or we would be at home receiving friends and family. You never knew who might show up, but Mom always had extra food prepared and the house was extra clean so folks wouldn’t talk. We connected regularly.
Whether by phone or in person, be the connector in your family or circle of friends. Shake the bonds of the computer age and return to real life people talking to one another face to face. You might even like it!
Change is inevitable
In life, we often see ourselves in a never ending cycle of the same.
We go through the same routine daily. Get up, prepare for the day and off to work.
Then we return and back to house routine until we slow down for sleep.
We do this, day after day, year after year, often just watching our lives fly by as the clock spins upon the wall.
While things in our lives often remain the same, day in and day out, from time to time something happens which jolts us out of our mundane routine.
Sometimes its a pleasant surprise which makes life different. If we are single, we might fall in love.
If we are childless, a child might be in the making.
Or we might be jolted by some unexpected moment that changes our lives – an accident, a fall, an illness, the death of a loved one. Any of these might shake our life.
It might be something simple. For me recently after many years with having the same people live around me. Solid good neighbors upon which I depended upon for decades, now I am seeing a shift as different ones move away. With each a little adjustment is required. Now there are new people to learn, but its unlikely that decades of neighboring will be recovered quickly in these new relationships, but in time perhaps, I will once again feel as comfortable as I did with the others. At least I hope so.
No matter what aspect of our lives we are looking upon, the inevitability of change is always there—new co-workers, new responsibilities, new expectations, new neighbors, new elected officials, new problems, new hopes, new dreams and new losses.
Despite this, we see our lives as routine, but in actuality every day is filled with little differences.
We are provided opportunities for countless choices every single day. Any one choice might be the one that catapults us into a sea of unknown circumstances. We choose the wrong food item at lunch and we get food poisoning. Were off to the hospital and we get an unplanned bill. We miss a few days of work. All this sequence of events hinged on a quick decision while walking through a cafeteria or restaurant food line.
Change is always with us, it is the source of our opportunities. If we are mindful and watch the changes in our surroundings, we might find one coming that opens boundless opportunities for our future.
I am saddened at the recent and coming changes within my circle of neighbors. Hopefully, good folks will fill the voids left by these changes and overtime will become the stalwarts I hope to have around me as we move forward in this uncertainty we see around us.
Be mindful and forward thinking as you go through you daily routines and perhaps, just perhaps, you will be the orchestrator of positive change that impacts us all rather than the dutiful recipient.
The ground is turned
The spring brings such a joy as it comes time to run my feet through the dirt of the garden.
This year took a bit more effort for me as my tiller was finding every reason not to run this year.
I had endured that last winter and turned the rows by hand. Sadly, it wasn’t as good as I hoped it might be.
It took my brother and I to give it a good tune up a couple of weeks back and it still had a hidden issue neither of us could find. It’s amazing how a small engine with only so many working parts could give one such a time.
A fellow gardening friend – Pete – thankfully had the tinkering abilities to get it going. Maybe it was the magic touch.
A warm day and a couple pulls on the engine and I was off tilling the garden giving it a solid treatment.
After letting the fertilizer sink in a couple of days, I was ready to plant.
I rotated my normal vegetables – cucumbers, yellow and zucchini squash, potatoes, green beans, corn, bell peppers, corn and tomatoes and added a few new to try out this year – spinach, lettuce, onions, cantaloupe and a couple of herbs – basil and thyme.
I learned many of my early gardening from my Grandpa Jesse and my mom and dad. It’s amazing what a little hard work, well cultivated soil, good seeds and some watering can provide.
When I was a child, my mother put up in jars so many vegetables from what we grew in our small garden. We often had food throughout the winter. With each passing year as a kid, I took great joy in seeing a greater yield in what we were doing.
Since I returned to the effort about three years back, unfortunately, I have not seen the return of those childhood yields. Perhaps I have forgotten a few of those early lessons which gave me such a childhood advantage. Or simply, my soil is so much poorer in where I garden today compared with what I had built up over time as a youth.
It seems I can manage a pretty good crop of cucumbers, squash and peppers, as those are what I have pickled, frozen and eaten the most through the winter from my efforts.
With the rising costs of food, that we all are seeing in the stores, I have high hopes that I will be able to be more effective this season in my endeavor.
I even tried a few experimental watermelon in a place I don’t normally plant. As they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
In any event feeling the fresh-tilled soil between my toes reminds me such of walking behind my grandfather as his plowed.
It’s not exactly the same, but I can almost see his Bib overalls legs up ahead of me as I look along the ground. I can hear his booming voice as he calls out for me to bring the seeds and walk behind him placing them just the right distance apart.
Then months later, I remember looking up at the corn so high above me head with the bean vines running up each one.
My seeds are in the ground, the watering will bring on what comes next and hopefully in a few months, all of my efforts will yield some great eats.
I hope you are taking the time to plant some food wherever you are. Even if its just a few plants on a patio. Every little bit helps and we all need all the help we can get these days.
When life is rough, play golf
I was standing in the teeing area trying to figure out the best approach to get my ball where I wanted it to go.
Once I settled on an approach, I pulled my driver, set the tee and my ball.
As the old joke goes, I addressed the ball – “Hello ball.”
I gave a practice swing to make sure I had the right form. I didn’t but I never have. But I keep trying to do so.
I pulled back my driver and brought it down to hit the ball just right. I love the sound when it hits just right and off into the sky the ball flies. I look trying to follow the ball and it veers from center headed towards the rough on the left side of the fairway.
My plan and swing had failed to propel me in line with the hole. Was it my swing? Maybe the wind? Could it have been my driver?
In all seriousness, it was all these things, they all played a part in where the ball flew and landed.
The greatest not mentioned was my skill as a golfer, which I am the first to say is non-existent beyond having an outstanding grip on the club. After that its all down hill.
I have however hit a few good drives and quite a few outstanding putts along the way. Though I have frustrated some very good golfers making the score go the wrong way for the team.
Why do people spend so much time chasing a little golf egg around this long green pasture where gophers left holes and people stuck flags in them so people wouldn’t step in them?
Well perhaps its our present-day self reaching back to the inner history of our spirit which remembers the endless days of our ancestors roaming through nature in search of game to put on the table to survive. Since many no longer fulfill that activity, golfing provides an alternative mechanism to sustain that internal feeling. We even call it shooting a round of golf.
I wish I could say I have learned some lessons that I could impart to you about my times on the back nine, but unfortunately, other than avoiding the alligators when golfing in Florida, I’ve got nothing.
However, I have learned that many business deals are shaped on the course, so perhaps that is a lesson. If you are young man in a profession that is made in the deals then be sure you can play a round of golf.
Can I convey a life lesson – enjoy your time on this earth. If you like being outside, find a pastime that will fill your soul with the warmth of happiness that refills your engine. Golf is it for some, for others its hiking, others gardening, others …. the list is endless. Find those that uplift you and press on, just watch out for those not watching out for you. Fore!!!
Tarry a little longer
I recently sat in the pew for a funeral listening to the preachers and speakers as they focused on the amazing life of a friend, colleague and co-author – the late Ringgold Mayor Joe Barger.
We spent nearly a year working weekly creating his autobiography – Testing the Metal of Life.
One line from the speakers really stuck with me shared by speaker Gary Knowles – he closed with the line tarry a little longer, when speaking about how he regretted not spending a little more time with the deceased when he passed by seeing him working out in his yard.
That stuck with me – everyday our lives take us by people’s houses. We see folks on the street, in the store or around town. Sometimes its people we see often, sometimes its an unusual crossing of paths.
What do you do? Do you wave and keep going? Do you stop and make small talk? Do you really greet an old friend and spend some time, maybe ask them to join you for lunch or coffee?
A few minutes can tell us a lot about other people’s circumstances. With the seasons of life, people move into and out of our lives and we lose touch.
They stay with us in mind as we last left them. As the years pass we picture them as we last saw them, so we can sometimes be surprised by what we find if they pop up unexpected.
Do or did they mean something in your life?
Are they older? Are they your age?
If you think about it, we all have people in our lives of all ages, from all phases, that we wish we could have spent a few more minutes with, when they were gone.
Just a few more words, another afternoon fishing, a ballgame, a dance, time around the kitchen table sharing stories, a walk in the woods, just sitting and not saying anything could have meant the world to any of us when we look down into their closed eyes in a casket.
In short, the message to all of us is clear, if someone’s means something to you, don’t hurry, don’t rush, just tarry a little longer. You never know when it might be the last time you see them.
Sometimes a statement is just that
Conversations have always been a two-way street.
One person says something, another returns. Many times these moments pass in full agreement with both parties who are speaking totally in agreement on the topic.
Just the same, in a moment total agreement might turn on a dime and become a disagreement.
Where do these come from? Is it buried in the conversation? Is it the opinion expressed by one of the participants? Is it a misunderstanding?
We have all experienced such. Sometimes they come up out of nowhere. Sometimes they are carefully crafted with selected words to entice just such a reaction.
Some folks enjoy creating strife or conflict. They draw a pleasure out of participating within the verbal joust between competitors.
I think sometimes especially among men who are not friends, there is almost a sense that conflict is how we are suppose to interact. After all we are trained that from childhood. Compete and come out on top in whatever our endeavor – sports, business, war, or even choosing a mate. There is nothing wrong with this thinking. It has stood the test of time to be a way to bring up the men we need to build and protect our society.
I am sad to say though, I am seeing fewer and fewer who are able to meet those expectations.
No matter the situation though, the ability to carry on civil conversations without coming to a disagreement is one that must be a constant effort of every man.
In a time when our country seems to be divided on many issues, perhaps all men and women need to reflect upon those that have come before and their sacrifices to America.
We are all Americans, we must not allow people to divide us into groups who disagree and fight with one another over petty issues. I recently saw a man’s testimony on social media saying that what is important is keeping our America a float and not allow it to sink under the weight of what is being done to us by those in positions of power.
We can battle over this way is right or that way is right. What I see is those we have put in charge don’t know the way and we are following them blindly into a dead end alley.
What will be our fate in that alley? I don’t know, I just hope that once we are there, we realize we are all there together and must work together, converse together to figure out how we might get out of there together as Americans.
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