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 gasoline pump filling my tank. When a car pulled in next to me. After hearing the engine, I immediately thought, they are lucky to be going anywhere.
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 on the Tennessee River rivaled those of Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn.”
When my dad was a boy, Harve gathered the children around the fireplace and before bed told a story of an orphaned boy named A.J. (his real initials), filled with intrigue of riverboat gamblers and the dangers of riding the rapids on a handmade raft.
By this point in his life Grandpa Harve had become what my late cousin, Reece Franks, called demanding. Of course, Reece often found himself out tending to his horse and buggy after he came in from a visit to the general store where he sat and reminisced with his friends.
For some reason, as Harve became a man the waters of time brought him to Catoosa County where he courted a young girl named Emily Jane Bandy.
Already a talent at the fiddle, he brought the fiddle along while he courted. Although I think Grandma Emmer often thought he spent more time a fiddlin’ than he did a courtin’.
He eventually won her heart and the couple settled into a life of farming and raising children.
The love of music was something he shared with several of his children, teaching the fiddle to his son Tom. Henry took up the banjo, Ethel learned the piano, Jesse played along on the harmonica and the juice harp, while another one of the boys took up guitar.
As the sun lowered itself behind the hills, the clan would often gather in the parlor after supper and play a few tunes like “Turkey in the Straw,” “Leather Britches,” and “Camptown Races.”
Lester and Griff would roll back the rug and, although she’d probably not admit it the next Sunday at the Baptist church, Emmer and Harve danced a jig or two.
Harve had already passed his love of music along when a farming accident injured his left hand, making him unable to play anymore. That was probably one thing that pained him deep within his soul.
Henry’s death would eventually take the strains of the frailing banjo from the group, and as the family grew and the boys and girls married they took their music with them.
As the grandchildren came buzzing around, I know he would have given anything to pick up his old black fiddle and play them a tune but instead Harve entertained them with his stories of a youth making his way into adulthood in the reconstruction-era South.
I wish some of them had written the stories down but, alas, they are lost with time and even the memories that they ever existed are about gone.
It was from my great-uncle Tom, who made his life in Gordon County’s Sugar Valley, that I first heard someone play the fiddle close-up. He played some of the same licks that his father played before him.
While Grandpa Harve was not there, I could imagine him sitting at the fireplace, his old black fiddle in hand, playing with all his great-grandchildren gathered around him.
While many gather their earthly musical inspiration from the pop icons of this era that parade across the Grammy Award stage, I still draw my strength from family musical roots that run deep into the Appalachian soil.
Now we gather around computers, televisions and many other means to find our entertainment.
So many of us have lost something through the coming of so many choices – the ability to entertain ourselves by playing music with each other, sharing stories, telling jokes, and giving the next generation shoulders of those behind us to stand upon.
Without those connections often given in the experience of sharing life from one generation to the next, it is easy to see how so many folks waver in with little meaning or purpose to daily activities or lifetime goals.
Hundreds sweated, toiled, lived, fought, birthed, struggled, flourished, suffered, smiled and hoped so that we could walk after them and hopefully have a better life and make a difference for the family, the faith, the country or even mankind.
How much of a difference each day means that we are given when put into that prospective.
I encourage you to build upon the gifts you were given, make a difference in the lives of those you love and those you don’t even know.
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 but he could check back in a few weeks.
He reminded me of myself at his age, trying to find every odd job I could.
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 1,000 active bands, nearly 800 radio stations, and close to 200 associations.
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 minister was on the pulpit just preaching up a storm. That preacher began a sermon on the sacrament of baptism.
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 several lives.
I often wonder if people really realize the enormous task of thanking a mother for all she has done for her children. It seems that we have a day for everything anymore. A day to thank secretaries, grandparents, fathers and so many others. There should be a day to recognize all these people. All of these people deserve thanks.
But does a Hallmark card or a bouquet of flowers one time a year really pay homage to all the sacrifices that a mother makes for her children?
I was in seventh grade when I realized why the Yankees invaded the South.
Folks might say that it was to keep the Union together but the real reason behind it was they didn’t have grits and gravy and we did.
When there was no place among people for Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem, the animals made room for the birth of Jesus in a stable. Donkeys and horses were probably among the first to look upon the Son of God.
Isn’t it only appropriate that there be a place for them in the Kingdom of God? I am reminded of an old farmer, Jebadiah Cross who had worked his fields side by side with his old gray mule named Flossie for many years.
