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. 

 

Meatloaf and Memories

I think everyone has a stash of food-stained cards, scraps of paper ragged with age, and handwritten instructions stashed away in a kitchen drawer, cabinet or cupboard. Recipes passed down from Grandparents, Mothers, Sisters and friends from years past. Whether a complex description of how to properly prepare a prime rib or a two-ingredient concoction to satisfy a sweet tooth, they are all treasured by the lucky beneficiaries of these morsels of knowledge. 

We have all heard success stories about those who unexpectantly happened upon a secret recipe. Ruth Wakefield, who ran the Toll House Inn, in Massachusetts, added broken pieces of a chocolate bar to her cookie dough expecting them to melt evenly. Instead, they remained as chips, and the Toll House Cookie was born, becoming an American classic.

 Robert Cobb, owner at the Brown Derby restaurant in Hollywood in the 1930s, tossed together kitchen leftovers for a late-night meal. The salad became a star in its own right-loaded with chicken, bacon, avocado, blue cheese, and crisp lettuce. 

Caroline and Stephanie Tatin, two French sisters who owned an Inn outside of Paris accidently came upon the elegant upside-down apple tart, called Tarte Tatin. While preparing dinner for guests, Stephanie forgot to put a pie crust on the bottom of her apple pie. After realizing her mistake, she put the crust on top instead and flipped the dessert over to discover a perfectly caramelized apple topping.

One night, while Rhonda and I began our daily discussion as to what dinner would be, we mutually decided upon meatloaf. I had come upon the recipe years before and we both had enjoyed it over a period of several years. She asked me to retrieve the recipe from our secret stash of cards, papers and tidbits of magic potions. I pulled the box from the cupboard and began thumbing through the mess of papers, trying to find My Special Meatloaf Recipe. I was not having much luck and after about fifteen minutes, I suggested we grill burgers instead. Rhonda did not like this suggestion, so she began thumbing through the mess of papers and cards as I had just done for fifteen minutes. I took that moment to suggest that later, I would take the box of recipes and organize them. Maybe even digitalize each recipe and categorize them so that every recipe could easily be pulled from the computer based on whether breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, snack, etc. As I was explaining what I could do, she patiently kept thumbing through the box. She pulls a scrap of paper, food stained and wrinkled from age. She says, “Do you know who this recipe is from?” I shake my head no. She placed the piece of paper in front of me. She says, “That was the Bran Muffin recipe, your college roommate’s mother gave me forty years ago.”

 I picked up the recipe and read it. It was written in elegant cursive and even though it listed the ingredients and detailed instructions there was also a simple note of appreciation for the friendship she had shared with us over a weekend while she visited her son. It was signed Elaine Hyder.

 Rhonda retrieved another recipe, and once again, placed it in front of me. It was handwritten as well but was on a business letterhead piece of paper. Like the other, it was stained, folded, and the corners were ragged with use. I read the ingredients and instructions. It was signed by a dear friend from twenty years back, Janet Cooper.

 By the time I finished reading the last recipe, Rhonda handed me another. It too, was written on a scrap of paper, brown with age and in cursive. 

It said: Preheat oven to 475. Salt fowl & rub with margarine over his or her breast. Put in roaster with one qt. water at 9am and cook 1 hr. Turn oven off and DO NOT OPEN, until Ralph gets up. 

I held the piece of paper and realized it was written by Rhonda’s mother, Betty. I also realized that her reference to Ralph was Rhonda’s father. Both Betty and Ralph had long passed away but their memory had always held a special place in my heart. 

Rhonda finally finds my meatloaf recipe and retrieves it from the mess of papers and cards. She says, “That’s why I want to keep this box, just as it is. Not digitalized, not categorized, but requiring me to continually review each recipe. They’re more than recipes; they are our memories.

MY BUDDY

      Joe and I met the way many six-year-olds do, by accident.  It was the first day of first grade and we both, as little boys, wandered into the small classroom, wading into a new world of new experiences, new dreams and new acquaintances with excitement and fear. It was the first step for each into our future lives, alone.

     As the teacher instructed the group of twenty-five children to find a seat, both Joe and I decided on the same, small wooden desk.  As we began to argue, push and shove over who was going to have the desk, something happened between us, and we began giggling and laughing. We began to realize the desk; the seat was not important any longer, because we both had found our new best friend.

    From that day forward, our names were said in one breath: Jeff-and-Joe.  We were like two small shadows racing through childhood, inventing adventures out of empty fields and long summer hours.  We climbed trees taller than we were brave, skinned knees together, shared secrets whispered under blankets during sleepovers.  There were baseball games, Jeff-and-Joe, together in their ill-fitted uniforms, caps pulled low, ragged gloves in hand, living life, enjoying the game together. Each cheered on the other and each helped carry the other’s burden in failure. 

     As we both approached twelve years of age, there were other interests shared.  We learned to play the piano, guitar, trumpet and music became as important to us as baseball. Our sleepovers became impromptu jam sessions and summer days would find the two of us under a shade tree or carport with guitars in hand giving a concert for unappreciative neighbors.  Joe would teach me, and I would teach him, both encouraging the other toward a dream not fully understood. Saturdays, we would catch a bus to downtown Knoxville, and we would find our way to Fowler’s Furniture Store on Gay Street, where we would spend hours. On the third floor they had pianos, organs of all kinds on display and the two of us would play for hours, many times, the store employees would gather and listen as the two small, eleven-year-olds would play their music.  We didn’t realize it at the time, but we were probably the first ‘dueling pianos.’

     Summer trips camping with Joe’s family became one of my favorites.  With guitars in hand and mountains to explore, what more could two thirteen-year-olds desire.  We would sneak and buy Swisher Sweet cigars and find a safe place in the woods to smoke them, only to find ourselves sick afterwards but once again, we giggled and laughed and treasured our friendship.  Music was not forgotten while we camped and many times, we found ourselves playing for other campers and impressing the young girls with some of our pop song renditions.  As young boys, we were mischievous and found ourselves many times trying to explain our way out of a debacle with a Ranger or our parents, but never once did we leave each other’s side.  We always managed to carry the weight together.

       Teenage years made things messier, but not distant.  We warned each other about heartbreaks and celebrated first loves.  Yes, we got in trouble a few times-once for leaving school for lunch at Burger King but as we sometimes got in trouble, we also would get out of trouble together too.  Sports, tennis, baseball and hockey became treasured past times for Joe and me. As we were still not old enough to drive, my dad would drive us to the local ice rink to practice our skills. One night, Joe and I left the ice rink to grab a hotdog across the parking lot at the bowling alley.  As Joe ate his hotdog and began finishing off his desert of a cherry pie turnover, a hoodlum began picking a fight with us.  He was much older and bigger, and I suspected he had been drinking. There were several other guys with him and both Joe and I found ourselves in a bad situation.  We both got up to leave, and we quickly made our way across the parking lot back to the ice rink when the larger boy ran up behind us and started pushing Joe.  Before either of us could say or do anything, the larger boy hit Joe in the face.  I shoved at the larger boy and grabbed my buddy Joe, and we took off running.  As we came to the ice rink I glanced at Joe, and I saw what I thought was blood running down his face.  I was terrified.  We both ran into the ice rink, where my dad was waiting and as I explained to my dad what had happened, Joe began laughing.  What I thought was blood was just the remnants of his cherry turnover. What seemed funny to Joe and me did not seem funny to my dad.  He took both of us back to the bowling alley and I watched my dad walk up to the group of hoodlums who were now playing pool.  He yanked the larger of the boys up by the collar and threatened to beat the guy to death.  As Joe and I looked on, my dad gave a tongue lashing to the group of guys and as the manager of the bowling alley approached, my dad turned on him.  Cuss words, neither Joe or I had ever heard were spilling out of my dad’s mouth and as he motioned us to follow him out of the establishment, I glanced at the hoodlums who were now running for their lives and the manager stood speechless.  Both Joe and I, in hushed whispers, giggled and laughed in astonishment as to what we had witnessed. 

        In adulthood, our paths forked.  I built a family, and Joe built a career in music. There were moves, marriages, losses, illnesses…yet every time life’s weight pressed too hard on one, the other found a way to help shoulder it. 

       And then, somehow, sixty-seven years went by.

       Now I stand at the cemetery, the winter air cool, whispers of wind under skies of gray feeling empty.  The world was quieter without Joe’s laugh in it.  The kind of quiet that settles into the bones. 

      I rest my hand on the casket, fingers trembling but sure.  “We carried each other well, didn’t we?” I whisper.

      In my memory, Joe was still that boy, giggling and laughing, still the young kid that could make a piano sing, still the teenager who insisted we’d live forever, still the man who would stand by my side as my best man at my wedding and give me praise with the birth of my child.

      In the twilight of life, the carrying had changed form.  Not physical, not even spoken.  Just the steady comfort of knowing someone had walked beside me almost every step of the way.

     I draw a deep breath, heavy but grateful.

     “Thank you, buddy,” I whisper.  “Thank you for being there for me. Thank you for carrying me through the good and bad times.”

     Though Joe was gone, I felt it-one last time- the familiar warmth of being carried.

 

    My buddy, Joe Stafford died November 29, 2025. I feel as though a piece of my life died as well and the sorrow, grief and loss are overwhelming.  On December 4^th, 2025, under the dark gray winter skies, I helped carry my buddy to his final resting place. For that privilege I am grateful and will always feel indebted to him and his family for allowing me that honor.  I know he is now in heaven and at peace still helping me carry-on.

 

WHY

     

    Why?  A one-word question that I have asked many times in my life. As a child, I had often questioned my parents with that one word, and invariably I would get the same answer, “Because I said so! That’s why!”

     There was never any other conversation about why. I simply learned to accept their answer for what it was. I knew they loved me. I knew they did what was in my best interest and I knew they had much more experience in life than me. Therefore, even though I might not know the real answer as to why, I knew their decision was in my best interest. I had FAITH in them.

     It's interesting how life works, because as I grew older, I never stopped asking WHY. I simply stopped asking THEM why. I began asking myself that one word question, WHY. Why do I want to go to college? Why do I believe in God? Why do I have the hots for that new girl down the street? Why can’t I buy that 1965 red, convertible Mustang? Why does that new hot girl down the street keep turning me down? The why’s never stopped and I really couldn’t answer myself, as I had always been told, “Because I said so, that’s why!”

     I discovered I was at the point in my life where I would have to find the reason why for myself. I did not take this new responsibility lightly. As new why’s came into my life, I would investigate, study and ponder the options with great care, because I knew my decisions would formulate who eventually I would become. I found myself reading articles about politics, religion, and economics, trying to find the right answer as to WHY.

     It was always a triumphant feeling when I discovered that I had made a wise decision after careful consideration of all the information, but there were some questions, mostly philosophical, that could never be answered by my studies. Questions such as Why is there childhood cancer? Why do tragedies happen to good and righteous people? And most recently, Why do I want to walk the Camino?

     The Camino is an ancient pilgrimage in Spain of over five-hundred miles, ending in Santiago de Compostela. It is considered, The Way of St. James, where the Apostle was believed to have walked and now is buried beneath the Romanesque Cathedral in Santiago. For over twenty years there had been a yearning, to take on the challenge of walking from Saint Jean Pied de Port France, to Santiago de Compostela Spain, following the footsteps of Saint James. I kept asking myself WHY. I knew my urge to take on this Pilgrimage was much more than just to conquer another challenging adventure. It came from something much deeper within my soul.

     I’m a Christian but this was something beyond my deliberations as to WHY. I had to look up who Saint James was! I discovered Saint James was one of Jesus’ original twelve disciples and the stories of his discipleship across Western Europe was intriguing, but there was no answer as to WHY I should follow in his footsteps on the Pilgrimage across Spain. I studied the trail and even though there was a host of historical sites to be encountered, and there were huge numbers of people from around the World that walked this famous pilgrimage annually, I still could not figure out WHY I had the urge to do the Camino de Santiago. I wished I could have asked my Mother or my Father, although I kind of know what the answer might have been.

     Instead, I turned to God for an answer. It was done in prayer, over several days and nights, months.

  God, in all his wisdom, simply said, “because I said so!”

     My FAITH sent me to do the Camino, which I did in 2023. I walked five hundred thirty-eight miles, completing what is called the Camino Frances. I went back in 2024 and completed the Portuguese Route and the Finisterre (The end of the World). I learned so much on these treks. I answered so many of those, unanswered why’s. I realized I tended to judge people too quickly. I didn’t listen. Not to others, not even to what life was telling me. I discovered the true kindness of mankind, which I had begun to believe was extinct. I witnessed a deep spirituality of different religions, and the unwavering ability of tolerance displayed by most, if not all. On the Camino, I changed. I discovered a new purpose in my life, which in all its simplicity gave me something to live for. On the Camino, I found me, or at least who I wanted to be.

     Lesson learned. When you ask WHY and you hear, “Because I said so, that’s why.” Have FAITH!