i almost threw it away.

It was in the middle of a bunch of stuff in a box of many boxes i was cleaning out.

It was yellowed and sort of fragile. i was afraid it might crumble into pieces.

But it was a newspaper clipping, easily recognizable as a sports item. “Lebanon Wins / Over Watertown” the two-line, one column headline read.

Being an old sports reporter and editor, i paused and read the three paragraphs and cringed. It was not the way i had learned to write sports stories on athletic contests: first paragraph twenty-five words or less letting the readers know “who, what, where, and when;” all other paragraphs short and written with the least important parts of the story at the end, so the editor when making up the hot-type page could throw out linotype lines from the bottom up to make the story fit in the space. Half-way through the third and final long paragraph, i found the reason the clipping had been saved. i wondered if other such stories had been stashed away by my Prichard family. The important part was even underlined: “Captain Prichard ended her high school career by leading the scoring for the evening with  ten points.

i shook my head. i’m pretty sure my mother, the captain they lovingly nicknamed “Runt” since she topped out somewhere around five-feet tall, played one more game. i’m pretty sure she told me they had one tournament game, which they lost. Still, “Runt” had a pretty impressive run. Her single game and season point totals remained a Lebanon High School record for a quarter of a century. She was one of the initial inductees into the Blue Devil Hall of Fame. i still laugh when i think of her standing between Rita Rochelle and Louis Thompson, both of whom dwarfed her.

And to give the un-credited writer credit, he or she did mention nearly every player for both teams, men and women.

When i concluded, i thought it would be good to post the clipping. After all, there are a lot of Lebanon and Watertown folks who might recognized the other names.

One thing that hasn’t changed from one year to the next is organizing. For some while now, my focus has been on photos. i have photos everywhere. Some are in boxes, lots and lots of boxes. Some are in albums; mine, my mother’s, my aunt’s, Maureen’s, and Maureen’s family; lots and lots of albums.

It is a task, not likely to ever be completed, but one that nearly always take me back to happy memories.

Yesterday, i stumbled upon some framed pictures in a box. Boom: memories of love:

1983. Maureen had some photos made of her to remember her by when i would leave right after our wedding, report to my new ship, USS Yosemite, in Mayport (Jacksonville), Florida, then leave for almost eight months on a  deployment to the Indian Ocean. One of the owners of Parron-Hall Office Interiors where she worked was also an amateur but very professional photographer.

One of the photographs was a beautiful shot we framed. i hung in my office wall opposite of my desk so i could spend most of my days at sea looking at her. This one, smaller head shot, i kept by my bedside in my stateroom just forward of the office.

She hasn’t changed much, and i love her as much as i did on those eight months at sea, in some ways maybe even a bit more.

Circa 1993. Also framed in that box was one of my favorite photos. It was taken at Dan’s A-Frame in Grass Valley during Thanksgiving, i think in 1993. It’s my family. We were seldom together because Blythe was in Austin with her mother. So the photo is rare and therefore, even more precious to me. The focus is not perfect, but i still have another copy framed in the house to look at and think of how lucky i am to have all three in my life.

2016. There are more photos, but lying next to the pile waiting to be scanned along with the  two above  was a small painting. Sarah had painted it for me as a Christmas gift this year. It was to remind me of the trees outside my sister’s house on the hill sloping fiercely down Signal Mountain. It captures that memory perfectly. It also shows off another one of her talents.Both Sarah and Blythe are exceptional artists, something they got from their mothers. i am always amazed at how talented they both are in so many different ways, and as i often tell Maureen, the two of them are already successful as humans and are destined to be successful throughout life.

Now i must stop and get on to appointments and errands. But tonight, i think i’ll look for some more boxes with photographs. They won’t be hard to find.

Yesterday was the first of the year, but my year really didn’t get started until today.

You see, i made black-eyed peas with hog jowl (the jim jewell version includes tomatoes, onion, and a whole bunch of stuff that sounds good to me at the moment) and my mother’s version of cornbread, which never includes sugar – and someday, i will get brave enough to fry it like my mother sometimes did or make cornpone, two distinctly different things. If i ever tell Maureen the Southern tradition of making turnip greens because of the belief it will bring you money in the coming year, then i will probably add that to the New Year’s Day menu…by request. But for now, it’s enough to do what i do.

Then there were other things to attend to yesterday, mostly getting organized to start the year one day late.

So here it is, my first day of the year. This morning, i made my walk/run, for now walk only. Through an unintended selection from my normal “shuffle all” due to fat fingers, i ended up listening to Tom Waits’ album “Closing Time.”

It occurred to me there are about a half dozen singers who have had a significant impact on me and are my favorites to whom i listen most of the time. I decided to add Waits (a second cousin to my shipmate, apartment sharer in bachelor heaven, and friend, JD Waits) to the list. i identify with the thoughts in Waits’ songs, especially on this album, even the rough parts. i’m adding him to my list because the same is true of the others.

Jimmy Reed was the first to resonate with me. i listened to and watched Snooky Lanson and Dinah Shore on “Hit Parade” in the early fifties after hearing Fred Waring on his television. Before that, it was nearly all old country and Dennis Day on our 78-RPM album “Johnny Appleseed.” i’m sure there were others but those and of course, the inimitable Spike Jones struck in my head.

But Jimmy Reed impressed me, something new; no, not new, radically different from rock ‘n roll, bubblegum rock. He sang the blues. i do not know how i first started listening to WLAC at night. The news, talk, and easy listening Nashville station went to the dark side at night, nine o’clock to be exact. i loved it. Big John R, Gene Nobles, and Hoss Allen introduced me to blues, called “rhythm and blues” back then – and it was so much more rhythm and blues than the genre label today. The dark side went until way into the midnight hour and beyond, the ending time still unknown by me as i don’t think i ever stayed up that late, with the small radio under the covers thrown over my head so my parents would not hear how late i was staying up. Of all of the great blues singers, all gone now, Jimmy Reed was my first favorite. Then at Castle Heights in the spring, the track team when practicing boomed Jimmy Reed albums on the football field press box speaker system. Coming back from baseball practice down Hill Street, i envied the track guys. Jimmy Reed’s “Live at Carnegie Hall” still gets played frequently on my turntable.

Then came Vanderbilt where my Kappa Sigma fraternity brothers introduced me to Nina Simone and “Nina’s Choice,” still my favorite album of hers, perhaps because it was the first. I learned more about her and learned to appreciate her demand for equality and felt i understood, as much as a boy my age from my culture could understand, her anger. She taught me a lot. i’m pretty sure i have more CD’s of Nina’s than any other artist, but i still listen to “Nina’s Choice” the most.

Sonny Boy Williamson was added to my list much later. i loved much of Sonny Boy’s songs as i did Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Eddie Floyd, Slim Harpo, John Lee Hooker, and the more popular with the general population Bobby Blue Bland as well as others that blurred the line between blues and rock ‘n roll. But the four CD album, “The Essential Sonny Boy Williamson” laid it on the line. It is raw and it is the blues. i listen and i am back in the deep South where someone like me shouldn’t be, and i identify.

Of course, i was raised thirty miles from the capital of country music. Growing up, even though i liked listening to a lot of it, i rejected it as hick. i didn’t want to be labeled as a hick. But bluegrass captured me. It seemed to be genuine country, and Flatt and Scruggs were the icons of Bluegrass for me. Oh sure, there was Bill Monroe and the Stanley Brothers, but i loved Lester’s smooth voice, the unequaled banjo of Earl, and the dobro, oh yes, the dobro of the Foggy Mountain Boys. i play their albums often, especially “Folk Songs of Our Land.” My fraternity brothers, Alan Hicks and Cy Fraser, are much more informed than me but we have enjoyed Flatt and Scruggs and other Bluegrass bands together for years.

Somewhere in there, i am not sure exactly when but it was during my MTSU years, 1965-67, because i was at our home on Castle Heights Avenue when i heard a Carter Family song on the radio. It was “Heaven’s Radio.”  I was enthralled. After all, the Everly Brothers in “I Wonder If I Care As Much” are the only singers i’ve ever heard with an equally evocative pronunciation. The Everly’s sang the title line as “I wonder if I keer as much.” The Carter’s did them one better because they made a rhyme of “If there’s static in the air, and you can hardly hyar, you better turn on the radio of the Lord.” i have their album “Clinch Mountain Treasures” and often put on it on my CD player and go back to my roots.

Then, there is Hamper McBee. At Vanderbilt, my fraternity brother Billy Parsons – i think i’m going to drop “fraternity” from my descriptions because all of those guys are truly “brothers” to me – introduced me to Hamper McBee. He was close to a ne’er do well up in the hills of Monteagle Mountain. He bootlegged whiskey, occasionally got thrown in jail, and he sang a bit. If i remember correctly, Tubby’s Tavern was just a bit south of US 41 as you rolled into Monteagle about halfway from the town to Sewanee, the University of the South. If you took a detour to Tubby’s and there was a white mule tethered outside, you knew Hamper was in there singing songs. When i detoured from a trip to or from Chattanooga, the mule was never there. But others made that stop. Some Nashville dentist (i believe he was a dentist and i think he later became a politician) went up in the mountains and interviewed Hamper in his natural habitat: the woods, not the jail or Tubby’s. The result was some hilarious interviews, but the music was superb Southern hill folk music.

In the early 1980’s, i spotted an old record store on El Cajon Boulevard in San Diego. Maureen, whom i was dating, went in with me. There were some great treasures in LP’s in the rows and rows of records, but i couldn’t find that album. Finally i asked the owner, an older man on the heavy side with a white wispy beard if he had anything by Hamper McBee. The man went into orbit. Not only did he have about thirty songs on a cassette, he was a fanatic fan of Hamper. i couldn’t believe it. Hamper is another who takes me back to my roots. Soon i hope to digitize my cassette.

Judy Collins came into my awareness while i was on my first ship, the U.S.S. Hawkins. She had an incredible voice, was one of the leaders of the folk movement in the late 1960’s, and i think i loved her. Someday i will relate how the staff officers of COMPHIBRON Five would relate to that song when sung by “Baby” at the Subic O’Club. Only Nina’s albums are greater in number in my collection.

So i sit by our fire with the new year upon me. i have given up on Facebook for a while so it is truly a new year.

To usher it in there is nothing much better to express my eldnerness and hopefully, my approach to the world for the rest of my life than Mose’s song, “Ever Since the World Ended:” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbSR0z8uMME.

Now if you hit the link and listen to that song, you may stay on and hear a marvelous interview and collaboration between Mose and Van Morrison.

i hope you too have a wonderful New Year.

.

It is raining here, a blessing for the parched high desert.

It is cold here although nearly all of the rest of the country would define a high of 59 and a low of 46 as “cool.” Consequently, we have had a fire in the family room inglenook since midday. But except for our routine of the heat on for two hours to warm the house in the morning, the fire will be our only heat source.

As has become our practice for the past several years, we are staying at home, enjoying each other’s company…and the fire. i am recording the Fiesta Bowl. Later, we will probably watch the game sans talking heads and commercials.

Maureen remains plagued by a sinus cold and likely to be in bed before nine. i have no particular schedule for bedtime. But it will be long before midnight Southwest corner time.

It is such a wonderful time of the year. Christmas celebrates the birth of Christ in spite of all the commercialism, other religions, and quasi-religions continuing trying to dilute the real reason for the season. Along with celebrating Jesus, we feel a sense of birth. And the new year speaks of resolutions to improve, to look forward to the coming year, to put the negative behind us. In short, it is the season of hope.

As a rule, i shy from making resolutions. i keep coming up with things to improve throughout the year, and there is no sense confusing those with overlays.

But this year in this season of hope, this coming year of accepting oldness, rejoicing in it, i resolve to live my life as well as possible, to deny bitterness and sadness from overshadowing that hope, to accept folks as trying to do what is right and not fault them for their rejection of others.

i will be amazed if i do not backslide.

i will make every effort to be strong, truthful, and caring but with my boundaries established.

May all of you have a New Year full of gladness, good health, and success as you define it. You are my friends and family. i care for all of you.

And i’m hoping as i type.

We just had a trip, not exactly from hell, but it was not a sublime experience.

Yet we made it. My sister and i talked into the wee dark of the morning, solved damn near every problem in the world, and i should follow her to bed.

But i am compelled to make some comments first.

Our transfer flight from Dallas to Nashville was delayed. We had a shuttle reserved to ride to Chattanooga to meet my sister and our arrival time made making that shuttle unlikely. The next shuttle was two hours later. Maureen contacted the shuttle company, unnamed because of my desire not to denigrate the shuttle service or get any of their employees in trouble. The dispatcher told her unequivocally no, the shuttle couldn’t wait past it’s departure time.

We landed with less than 15 minutes to the shuttle departure. i told Maureen and Sarah to wait inside the security area while i went to the shuttle area. There were no food services outside the gate area. i headed for the shuttle, found it, and spoke to the driver. He agreed to wait 15 minutes to see if our luggage arrived at the baggage area. It did, and we made the shuttle. He had waited about 15 minutes, but with the Nashville commuter traffic, the 15 minutes didn’t matter.

As we drove out of Murfreesboro where we had another stop and toward Tullahoma, Maureen thanked me for talking the driver into waiting. i said it wasn’t difficult. i know Tennessee people and although the dispatcher was obligated to follow the rules and hold to the schedule, the driver, face-to-face would be a nice person and make every attempt to help out his passengers.

After we went over Monteagle mountain and were running along I-24 with the mountain soaring up on my side of the van, i looked through the fogged window. There on the side of the mountain was a clapboarded house. It appeared to have no more than two or three rooms. Smoke was rising from the chimney. There in the small, front window was a Christmas tree, lit with multi-colored light.

i tried to imagine the family there, maybe a couple with two or three children, trying to eke out a living, maybe the man going into town working at a labor job while working his plots in the side of the mountain. i thought of them clothed in flannel on Christmas eve, hanging the stockings over the fireplace, the children with wide eyes looking anxiously out the window.

Perhaps there was a wreath on the door; minimal decorations compared to the big houses in town: meager but enough. Presents also limited but again enough. i thought of the children waking on Christmas day and rushing into the room with the fireplace and the tree, finding the gifts Santa left by the hearth along with a note thanking them for the milk and cookies put out the night before on a small table nearby.

It is a wonderful season, and there is no place that captures the spirit like the shuttle driver and the family in the modest house on the side of the mountain.

After all, this is Tennessee.

Merry Christmas in all of its glorious meaning.