I watched this string of youth all under eight-years-old, their hands behind their backs and their faces buried in a green and yellow watermelon rind resting on a white table. They only stopped long enough to spit a seed. Each was trying to win the title and the prize in the contest. This was shortly after hearing the sirens blare, seeing the flags wave as people paraded down main street smiling at friends and those they didn’t even know.
As I stood upon a chair hearing my friends play outside, I just knew that I was going to miss something.
Every fall, I always knew that some of my time would be spent standing on a chair as my mother knelt with straight pins gripped in her mouth measuring the cuffs in my new pants. I know I drove her crazy fidgeting as she tried hard to make them just right. Without failing, she would eventually take the pins from her mouth, look up at me and say “Can’t you stand still for just a minute?”
This past weekend I thought I was over the worst of dealing with several days of fever with no other symptoms.
Of course, I had committed to be in North Carolina, so I crawled in the car and away I went praying for the strength to do His work. Thankfully He did, getting me there and back and giving me the ability to do the show. It just reinforced to me the old adage, the show must go on. People are often impressed by the glamour they think makes up such a large portion of a performer’s life.
Have you ever wondered who your walk each day impacts. Are you a leader in your community or your church? How about in your family?
Do you set the pace that everyone else follows?
“Where have all the people gone?” is a question that I often find myself discussing as I visit with other musical performers and event promoters.
What they mean is where are those who once came and filled the seats in a thousand seat auditorium and helped the promoters make enough money to pay the entertainers, so they could pay their staff, fill the bus with diesel and move on to the next town.
I took the antique cedar box and polished it until it had a shine like a brand new nickel. In the inside of the upper lid, I pasted a photo of me playing the fiddle on the stage of the Ryman Auditorium. It is amazing what we might think will serve to convey the feelings within our hearts. I was still in my teens and this was meant to win the heart of a young lady that I thought had hung the moon. At least she did a pretty close job of it for me at that time. But once again I found myself on the end of a spear called rejection.
It was Saturday morning and I had risen early in anticipation of a family outing.
I couldn’t have been more than seven and of course to me the adventure should start right then despite the fact it was an afternoon picnic that was planned.
As a youth my Granddad Bill made his way west and when he returned to the Gravelly Spur, he brought with him the stories of the Old West, gunfights, cattle rustlers, ranchers who ran large ranches like kingdoms.
I slid around the edge of the roof of the house removing the gunk that had collected in the gutters. Being a musician my hands were such a vital part of my life, I always came away with them skinned up from the adventure.
I was driving across Georgia the other day on a back road when I noticed on my right a youth heading in my direction from the right at a fast rate of speed. He wasn’t running, so I assumed he was on a skateboard. Protruding from the small blue toboggan on his head, I could see earphones covering his ear. Over the bushes in my line of sight, I could see his flannel green jacket gaining ground fast as I began to slow my rate of speed.
