When one has reached the precipice of really old, like 75, there are moments of regrets about what is no longer.

Today, i felt old, like something was gone. Why? It was.

Late morning, we packed the car, said goodbye to my sister and her husband, who once again have given us a beautiful Christmas, and drove our rental car to the Nashville airport to spend the night in a nearby hotel before flying back to the Southwest corner tomorrow.

It was unusual. Well, it hasn’t happened quite like this before, but it’s been four years since it’s been like it always was, or at least like it always was from 1992 through 2014. But this time, we didn’t fly out of Chattanooga or take a shuttle to Berry Field to fly out that day. No, this time we spent the night in a hotel.

Forever and forever, since i became a wanderer, my last night anytime i was in Tennessee headed back west was with my parents in Lebanon.

Old ways are gone.

Of course, that is the way life is. It moves on. Change is inevitable. People pass on. That is neither good nor bad. It’s what we make it.

Still, driving on I-24 from Chattanooga to Lebanon over those mountains and past those hills and through those valleys on a road i’ve traveled more times than i can count, not even considering our trips on US-41 before the interstate was completed, i kept thinking how i would not turn north of US-231 or north of I-840 to head home to Lebanon, but how i would keep going because that is the way it is now.

OId is gone.

It is not such a good feeling for an old man, regardless of how he reasons life is meant to be that way.

It’s okay. Next year will be a good year. Daughters, son-in-law, grandson, other relatives will do just fine. Me too.

But i miss old.

My sister, with Maureen’s assistance, makes Christmas a gastro delight: In addition to Christmas breakfast and dinner, and a Christmas Eve supper of her taco soup and cornbread and her pre-Christmas welcome back dinner of spaghetti, she also makes brownies, boil custard, and her wonderful chocolate chip cookies for continual nibbling here and enough for Todd to distribute to many friends on Christmas Eve. This year, she thus far has used over ten pounds of sugar, over five pounds of flour, and more than five dozen eggs…and we are still eating. Then you add children church services with candlelight on Christmas Eve (the old man did not make the midnight service this year: too old to stay up that late after dealing with the three whirling dervishes and concerned that if i went twice, the walls just might tumble down) and this is Christmas morning, before the fire is started and before young’uns arrive. Merry Christmas to all. Noel.

i am a “rambling man.”

Well, i am not quite like Hank Williams as he described himself in his “Ramblin’ Man” or the Allman Brothers claimed in their song of the same name, although i guess i’ve been to enough places, gone from enough jobs to another, and had enough loves to qualify on that measure.

But i’m talking about rambling thoughts. i have enough of rambling thoughts to be called a rambling man in triplicate. i’ve had more than a few rambling thoughts on this trip back east. In fact, i’ve had so many ideas about what to post here, i haven’t had the time to do it. i am wondering if other folks have that kind of rambling and feel the need to write about them.

So right now, i’m rambling. Here are some, but not all of those thoughts. i wanted to capture them here and plan to write in depth about many of them later:

◊  Henry Harding remains my best friend. A short meeting last Tuesday confirmed our friendship, regardless of how long  we haven’t seen or talked to each other, never stops, just picks up again.

◊  Vanderbilt athletics is a gem within this state, often overlooked and never with the support it should have. Tuesday, i met David Williams, the retiring Vice Chancellor of Athletics who has forged a program dedicated to Commodore Athletes being true “Student Athletes” and giving them a college experience preparing them to live well long after athletics are behind them, preparing them to be good people.

◊ Southern women have an elegance and a gentleness hard to match. Ann Eliot is a superb example of that elegance and gentleness.

There are many other thoughts rambling around this rather empty head.

But this early evening, i went to church. No, the walls did not fall down. The Signal Crest Methodist Church held a service with children acting and narrating the story of the birth of Jesus Christ. It was fun and it was Christmas.

i felt a stirring in my soul i had not felt in a long, long time. Now, as i sit amongst family and a passel of grand nieces and nephews, it is Christmas Eve. It is a good feeling.

May all of you have a wonderful Christmas and a bountiful New Year.

Christmas must be here. Bedlam is rampant at the Duff home on Signal Mountain.

Yeh, it’s Saturday. Christmas is not until Tuesday, but a six-year old grand niece and the three-year old identical twin boys that appeared at my sister’s home this afternoon put an exclamation point on the season being in full bloom.

But later in the evening, the quiet has returned. Tommy, Abby, Olivia, Allie, Max, and Culley have gone home. Todd has gone up to the master bedroom to read. Maureen and Sarah are either reading, on the internet, or asleep.

My sister Martha and i sit in the family room with the Christmas music boxes, the new jigsaw puzzle in piles on the work table, the big tree still glowing, and now with the children gone, a fire in the fireplace. Quiet.

My thoughts went back to our getting here, far way from children at Christmas. On  our drive from Lebanon to Crossville and then to Signal Mountain, i thought of many things about home. i’m talking about Tennessee, specifically East and Middle Tennessee. That is where i was driving.

It was rainy on both the ride from home in Lebanon to Crossville and the ride from Danny and Toni’s home in Crossville to Signal Mountain. It was lovely.

Bucolic. That’s what i thought as the clouds provided a blanket on the shoulders of the hills and mountains we drove through. The rolling meadows were still green for the most part. The deciduous trees had lost their leaves, leaving them stark with the aspect of loneliness but the pines and the cedars loomed dark green in the vista. Occasionally, there would be a farmhouse with a barn nearby, working places even if the barns and other outbuildings had faded paint and a couple of boards missing. A few had “See Rock City” in white on the black roofs under the faded red barns. Bucolic.

Home, i thought. These folks on those farms are home. It is their life. It is a hard life, no doubt, but simple, and could be self-providing for all if needed. Home. Bucolic. Peace. That’s what i thought.

And i thought of all the people i know who had never seen this part of Tennessee. They would be on the interstates. Yeh, we were too for most of the drive to Crossville. But from Crossville to Pikeville to Dunlap and up the switchbacks to what we call the backside of Signal Mountain, it was all country.

Bucolic. i thought of those folks on those farms and Christmas morning and how they might have a cedar tree like we used to have when the three children would go out to Papa’s farm and chop down the tree and haul it back and pull out the old cardboard boxes from the attic and decorate the tree in the corner of the living room, and wait in anticipation. And how these folks in those farmhouses would have Santa visit even though there was a fire by the hearth, and they would laugh opening gifts and then eat a dinner from mostly things off the farm.

And how after all of the ruckus of the celebration was over, the old man would lean back in his chair by the fire and take a nap, and how the children would play around the tree with their new toys, and how all would be right with the world in this world so far removed from the network and the cars and the four, five, or more lane roads, and the glitter and the lights.

Peace. Bucolic.

i wish all of you could have taken that ride with me. i think it would be good for all of our souls.

Noel.

Well, well, well. In the seemingly continual ways of an old man, i remain perplexed and frustrated. i started this thing about the beardette and followed up with a two columns entitled a “hairy tale” published a number of years ago. i found a third and will likely re-post it here soon, but none were the one i was thinking about. i can’t find it. So i am reinventing.

When one had spent three years in the Navy as an officer who had to enforce haircut regulations in the middle of the long hair hippie craze, you can become rather confused about this hair thing. That is what happened to me in 1971.

Fresh out of my three years of Navy active duty, i became a reserve at the Watertown, NY center when i became the sports editor in waiting at the Watertown Daily Times. When i reported aboard, my hair was regulation Navy. The older editors and reporters for the paper took me under their wing, and included me in activities, leaving out the younger long-haired guys. The younger set avoided me, thought i was some throwback to an older culture, which they disdained along with me even though i was more in their age group.

Then, i discovered the reserve center was concerned regulation hair cuts were not conducive to younger folks staying in the reserves and were very lax, i commenced to let my hair grow (i still had some then) to match the other young reporters on the Times’ staff. i did not cut my hair for six months, had it trimmed, and then let it go for another six months. It did not grow straight and long, but curled and was thick all over my head (remember this was a long time ago).

The older set at the newspaper began to exclude me and started treating me a bit more like an upstart. The  younger reporters warmed up to me. i became good friends with many of them.

Then came my active duty for training, a two-week period i spent on the USS Waldron (DD 699) out of Mayport, Florida. With four days to drive and report aboard and wishing to make a good impression on the Commanding Officer and Executive Officer, i went to a Watertown barbershop and received what today would be called a “buzzcut.”

When i returned to the newspaper after my two weeks of training, the older set once again warmed up to me and considered me as part of their clique. The long-haired set went cool and kept me at a distance.

By the time my hair began to grow longer until i left my dream job a year later (to ensure financial security for my wife and new daughter), i was accepted by both sets and all was well.

i have thought about this over and over. i did not change because i cut my hair or let it grow. i was exactly the same person. Yet there was definitely people judging me, assuming i was something i wasn’t because of my hair length. i found this strange. i no longer worry about what other people think because of my hair, whether it is short, long, gone on my head or my face…except what my wife and grandson prefer.

To judge people because of their hair seems very small to me. Had i not worked in a variety of cultures and disciplines and experienced that bizarre judgement of me, i might find a haircut or facial hair offensive, but not now.

So for all of those follicle challenged folks, all those folks with dreadnoughts, all Santa Clauses, all shaven souls, all those with scraggly beards, all those with long locks, do your thing.

And oh yes, Merry Christmas.