Let Freedom Ring

 

Even at four years old, Troy began to realize what the flag stood for.  It represented his freedom! Troy was born on January 11, 1925, the youngest of four children. Raised in poverty, he learned early the values of hard work, faith in God, and love of country. When he was fourteen, he defended his mother from his abusive father and sent him away for good. From then on, Troy and his siblings worked together to help support their family, never seeing themselves as victims, but as people determined to build a better life.

Through delivering groceries, collecting bottles, and doing whatever work he could find, Troy discovered that success comes through perseverance. America did not promise an easy life. It offered something greater. The freedom to earn one through hard work and determination.

At just seventeen, with his mother’s permission, Troy enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War II. He fought in New Guinea and the Philippines, took part in multiple beach assaults, and earned five military decorations, including two Bronze Stars and a Silver Star. He learned firsthand that freedom is never free. It is preserved by the courage and sacrifice of those willing to defend it.

Returning home, Troy found that his mother had passed away. Despite hardship and loss, he never pitied himself. Instead, he remained grateful for the opportunities America provided. Until his death on July 11, 2012, he stood proudly whenever the flag was raised and the National Anthem was played. He believed that the greatest gift this nation offered was not wealth or comfort, but freedom for every person to pursue their own destiny.

Troy was my father, my hero, and my friend.  He taught me to love this country and what it stood for.  He taught me the simple ideal, for which he fought for his entire life and for which this Republic represents.  Our Freedom!

 

Best Present Ever

Father's Day came and went, but one memory kept rolling back into my mind. A birthday present my dad gave me 64 years ago.

I was about to turn ten, which was a big deal. Double digits! I had one goal, convince my parents I desperately needed a brand-new red Sting-Ray bike with a black banana seat and ape-hanger handlebars.

Dad looked up from his newspaper just long enough to say, "What's wrong with the bike you've got?"

Everything, I thought.

My bike was an archaeological artifact. Heavy as a tractor, covered in scratches, rust, dents, and sporting fake gas tank that fooled absolutely no one. My friends were popping wheelies on shiny Sting-Rays while I was making my bike sound faster by clipping playing cards to the spokes.

As my birthday approached, my parents sent me to stay with a friend for a few days. Looking back, I probably should have been suspicious.

Birthday morning arrived. Pancakes, bacon, happy birthdays... then Dad quietly slipped into the garage.

This is it, I thought. My Sting-Ray has arrived.

I heard a bike rolling toward the kitchen.

It was...my old bike.

Only now it had been sanded, painted fire-engine red, stripped of its fenders and fake gas tank, and fitted with a brand-new black banana seat. Dad proudly pointed out every improvement.

To ten-year-old me, it looked like someone had cut the roof off an old pickup, painted it red, slapped a Corvette emblem on the hood, and called it a sports car.

I was crushed.

But then I looked at my dad.

He wasn't seeing an old bike. He was seeing two days of hard work, love, determination, and pride. He had taken what we had and transformed it into the very best gift he could give.

That wasn't the Sting-Ray bike I'd wanted.

It was something far better. It was loving effort and care for his son.

Best present ever.

Thanks, Dad.

A Story of Forty-five Years

Forty-five years ago, Rhonda and I stood at the beginning of a journey with hearts full of dreams.  We imagined a good life, one filled with happiness, success, good health, deep love, and lasting friendship.  We did not know what the years would bring, but we knew one thing for certain: we would face them together.

There were the good days, the hard days that tested our strength.  There were long days, fleeting days, busy days, and boring days.  Sweet days filled with laughter and tired days when simply making it through together was enough.  There were moments so ordinary they barely seemed worth noticing, yet somehow, they became the memories we treasure most.

Over forty-five years, we learned that marriage is not a collection of perfect moments, but a beautiful mixture of the messy and the magical.  It is patience and forgiveness, joy and sorrow, holding on and letting go.  It is two lives woven together so tightly that the story belongs to neither one alone.

And now, as we look back through the pages of our life together, we see that every chapter mattered.  The triumphs, the struggles, the quiet moments, and the celebrations all became part of something larger than we could have imagined.

They are the pages of our story.  A story of friendship, faithfulness, respect, and love.  Forty-five years later, it remains the greatest story we have ever written together.

Happy 45^th Anniversary to my beautiful Wife and co-author of our story! 

PaPaw The Time Traveler

 PaPaw The Time Traveler

I sit on my back deck just after sunrise, with coffee cup in hand, and a fleece, faintly smelling of cedar and campfire smoke, pulled tightly around me.  The world is quiet except for the distant hum of traffic, a few birds heralding the new day, and the soft creak of the rocking chair beneath me.  I stare at the sky as if it owes me an explanation.

Seventy-four!  The number felt impossible! It’s my birthday and I’m not sure if I should celebrate or mourn.

I remember the days when I would joyously celebrate my birthday, but now I can’t help but feel sad.  Maybe it’s because every year on my birthday, the guest list inside my memory grows longer than the one around my table.  Friends who laughed beside me in college, drinking buddies, fishing partners, cousins, brothers in everything except blood, one by one, they disappeared into framed photographs and cemetery stones.

The back door creaks open and my Grandson, Wilson comes running to my side with a toothless grin.  In his hand he has colored a crude birthday card. Peppa Pig, one tall, one short.  He had labeled one Papaw and the other Wilson.  In haphazard print he had written, Happy Birthday Papaw, Love Wilson.

The six-year-old climbed onto my lap and studied my face intently as I deciphered his work of art. There is no better feeling than to feel the innocent love a young child can give with such ease and no hesitation. The sadness of my memories began to fade as I savored this short moment with him.  Wilson continued to stare at me as if I was some kind of museum exhibit.

Finally, he asked, “Papaw…..were you alive when they invented cars?”

I laughed.  “Yes, buddy.  Barely.”

His eyes got huge. “REALLY?!”

Now the youngster was fully invested and quickly questions again, “Did you know Abraham Lincoln?”

I smile, “No.”

“Did you fight dinosaurs?”

“No.”

“Did TVs used to be black and white because color hadn’t been invented yet?”

It was at this point, I decided to have a little fun.

“Well,” I said, “when I was your age, we only had one crayon.  Dusty Brown.”

He gasped.  “That’s horrr-i—ble.”

A few minutes later, as his young mind tried to imagine my life at his age, he looked at me seriously, and said, “Papaw are you sad because you’re old?”

“Maybe a little.”

Then he patted my hand gently like I was a war hero or a rescued pioneer and says in a conspiratory whisper, “Papaw…. I think it’s great you lived all those olden days. Don’t be sad, because if you didn’t get old, you couldn’t be my Papaw!”

And for the rest of the day, every time someone came by the house, he proudly announced, “This is my Papaw.  He’s seventy-four and he’s still working perfectly!”

HONKY-TONK ENGLISH

I first met Juan when he came by my house to give me a quote on a remodel project, in the suburbs of Atlanta.  He stepped out of his truck, a dented white pickup that looked like it had lived at least three separate lives.  He greeted me with a confident, “Mister Jeff, my friend!  Today….we fix everything.  No problem.  Like a country song, yes?”

                  That should have been my first warning.

                  Juan, an immigrant from south of the border, was a building contractor by trade, spoke English in a way that was both impressive and deeply confusing.  He had learned it, as he proudly told me, by listening to country music while driving a taxi in Texas.

                  “I learn from the best teachers,” he said, nodding seriously.  “George Strait….. Alan Jackson…and one man named Toby, who is very angry but….God bless…so patriotic.”

                  Now, I prided myself on my Spanish.  I’d studied it, practiced it, even had used it ordering food, without accidentally asking for a shoe instead of soup.  But standing there with Juan, I quickly realized I was about as fluent as a toddler with a phrasebook.

                  Our conversations became a linguistic jambalaya – half English, half Spanish, and half wild gesturing. Yes, that’s three halves!  That’s how confusing it was.

                  One morning, I asked him, “Juan, did the materials arrive?”

                  He nodded thoughtfully, “Si… the madera is here. But …..how you say…. The truck, she broke my corazón.”

                  “Your heart?”  I asked.

                  He shook his head.  “No, no.  The axle. 

                  Another time, I tried to explain a design change, with my limited Spanish, “Necesitamos mover la Puerta….uh…. two feet….hacia la izquierda. »

                  He squints, processing.  Then lights up.

                  “Ah!  You mean…. We take the door; we put her on the road again, like no good honky tonkying woman?”

                  I gesture widely and say, “No, we move the honky tonkying lady right here!”  and I take a pencil and mark the location on the two-by-four. 

                  He nods smiling and jots a few notes on his note pad.

                  I wonder if he is writing a new country music song. He is wondering if I realize the new position, I so eloquently instructed, would now be directly above a central air vent.

                  His crew, who spoke even less English, would watch us like we were performing some kind of experimental theater.  Juan would translate for them, but not quite accurately.

                  The moment that truly defined Juan happened late one Saturday afternoon.  We’d wrapped up a long week, and he leaned against the countertop, which he had built, and studied the job, like a cowboy surveying his land.

                  “Mr. Jeff,” he said, “In life….. you build things, you lose things… sometimes you fix things.  Is like a country song, always.”

                  I nodded.  “That’s….actually pretty accurate.”

                  He smiled, then added, “Aso, if something goes wrong….you blame the truck.”

                  “The truck?”  I question.

                  “Yes”, he said firmly.  “Always the truck.  Even if there is no truck.”

                  I laughed.  “That might be the most useful Spanish/English lesson you’ve given me.”

                  He grinned.  “Next week, I teach you about love, whiskey, and drywall.”

                  And that’s how I learned that fluency isn’t about perfect grammar or the right words.  Sometimes, it’s about meeting somewhere in the middle-with a little Spanish, a little English, a lot of hand gestures. …..and just enough country music to make everything make sense.

 

                 

 

                    

 

 

                 

What's A Pissant?

Wikipedia defines ‘Pissant’ as a type of Formica (ant) of the subfamily Formicinae, including species commonly known as ‘wood ants, mound ants, thatching ants, field ants and Pissants’.

I'm seventy-three years old and I just found this out. For the last seventy years, I thought I was a pissant. That’s what my momma used to call me.  I can still hear her saying, “Stop running from me, you little pissant!”  And with that she would start waddling at warp speed with switch in hand.  Being only six years old, I couldn’t run and laugh at the same time, and inevitably I would be caught, given a switching and once more reminded, I was a little pissant.

Even though at the time I had no clue what a pissant was, I kind of figured, by the beads of sweat on my mother’s brow, the tone in her voice and the fire in her eyes, pissant was not an endearing distinction. As years passed, I grew to embrace my new title, partly because I could run faster and my mother got slower. I think I was in college before I finally out-grew, ‘pissant’ and began being called Jeff. Even then, when the tone in her voice changed and she displayed those fiery eyes, I was given titles, such as, “You little piece of sh*t, or You little son of a bit*ch!”  Which I never could rationalize, because I figured that was a little self-deprecating for her to say.

It all started when I was six years old.  Our family was sitting around the small dinette table at dinner for supper. With the four us (my sister was yet to be born), our plates, silverware, napkins and glasses in wait, my mother began spooning the spaghetti onto our plates. Toasted garlic bread, sliced to perfection and portioned pl carefully placed on each bread plate.  With tea glass in hand, we held our glasses out, ready to be filled with her famous sweet tea.  As she carefully poured each waiting glass, I watched and the little pissant I was had an idea.  I reached my waiting glass across the table holding it steady as she carefully poured. About half-way, I yanked the glass from beneath the pitcher and sweet tea poured across the table. I laughed loud, expecting my brother and father to join, but no…….the look on all their faces said it all……… “YOU LITTLE PISSANT!” She yelled and commenced to pour the rest of the tea pitcher over my head.  Only then did my brother, my father and my dear mother begin to laugh. 

I’m glad after seventy years to have come to the realization that the term pissant was not really that disparaging.  Even though I was mischievous and some would say a handful, my mother did love me, and I loved her.  We had years of long talks, slow walks, and heartfelt moments together.  Those memories I will cherish till the day I die, when I hope this little pissant will see her again in heaven.

 

 

Do You Believe In Fate?

Do you believe in Fate?  Some suggest that time itself is guiding the choice, even when free will feels present.

I was once asked if I believed in fate. “Yes” I answered, without any hesitation. The confidence in my voice surprised even me, and later, when the room had emptied and the question lingered, I wondered why I had been so certain.

My mind drifted to a story I’d heard about Harrison Ford, the famous actor from Star Wars fame – how he wasn’t discovered through careful planning or ambition, but through a series of near accidents and coincidences. He was a carpenter, installing a door for Francis Ford Coppolla, the famous film director, when George Lucas and Richard Dreyfuss came to visit. Lucas noticed the young carpenter, his mannerisms, the look and the voice and on a whim asked if he would help him and read a few lines from a script, which happened to be from a new film he was working on, called Star Wars. A familiar face passing through the right room at the right moment.  George Lucas noticing what others hadn’t and eventually led to an acting part for Ford as Hans Solo.  A life redirected by chance so precise it felt intentional.  Fate, some would say, wearing the mask of randomness.

Do you believe in fate? The question, to me had come from Horace Holden, a minister and a successful businessman, a man who carried both faith and pragmatism with equal ease.  He asked it casually, almost offhandedly, yet it landed with the weight of a benediction.  In time, Horace and I became good friends, and through that friendship my world quietly widened.  One introduction led to another, like steppingstones appearing only when I lifted my foot.

Through Horace I met people whose names and stories I might never have known otherwise, including Don Ezell, owner of the famed Glen Choga Lodge in Topton North Carolina. Nestled in the mountains, the lodge felt like a place where time slowed and lives intersected, where conversations stretched longer than planned and strangers became familiar.  Standing there one evening, listening to the wind sift through the trees, I felt that same certainty I’d felt when I first answered the question, “Do you believe in fate.”

Fate, I realized, isn’t always dramatic. It doesn’t always announce itself with thunder or revelation.  Sometimes it’s a simple question, asked by the right person, at the right moment.  Sometimes it’s a friendship that opens doors you didn’t know existed.  And sometimes, looking back, you see that the path you thought you were choosing was quietly choosing you all along.