This has always been my favorite Christmas song

Merry Christmas Everyone

Coming this Spring

I've always loved Lucy

Conrad Pinkstaff

Conrad Pinkstaff was one of my bus drivers at Flat Rock Grade School back in the 1960's. He was quite a story teller and considered himself a bit of a poet as Charles Kuralt found out when he stopped for gas at Gordon's Junction.

John Glenn in Friendship 7

Probably the most important of the early missions was John Glenn's Friendship 7 flight. Glenn was the first American to orbit the earth, but more importantly, it signified that we had caught up with the Russians in the Space Race. It was the first step in fulfilling John Kennedy's promise of sending a man to the moon before the end of the decade. Listen how excited Walter Cronkite got in the back ground."Go Baby!"

The Launch of Apollo 11

As a boy, I tried never to miss a rocket launch at Cape Canaveral. Whether at home or at school, every blast off was a big event. Every astronaut was a hero. They were the best that America could produce. I remember more than one of my teachers leading the class in prayer for the Astronaut's safety. It was a different time and place. The country was more innocent and so was I. As I watch the old telecast of the launch of Apollo 11, I feel the same excitement that I did when I was a kid.I remember sitting under a shelter at Twin Lakes Park on July 20th 1969. I was attending a family reunion. But instead of riding the roller coaster I was sitting on my Daddy Ray;s  lap watching Walter Cronkite describe the lunar landing as it happened. Someone had brought a old black and white portable television. The picture was grainy, but it didn't matter. We were watching history. We were excited and at the same time scared that something would go wrong and the men would be stranded on the moon. But everything went according to plan and the men all splashed down safely a few days later. Fast forward to 2015. We have no astronauts. Who  do the young boys have to look up to now? You would think with all of the money that the government wastes, that there should be enough to send a a man to the moon every now and then for appearance sake. Every generation needs their heros.

The way things were

I used to watch Red Skelton every Tuesday night on Channel 10. Not only was he truly funny, he always represented himself as a gentleman. Today this message would be panned as sappy and naive, but I love it anyway, Time changes things over the years. But this still rings true today. 

My First Published Work

Last week at my Grandma Peg's memorial, my Aunt passed around a scrapbook that my grandmother had put together several years ago. In the book was a poem I had written in 4th grade for a county wide contest in 1968. The poem somehow won first place and was published in a small anthology. I had long forgotten about the poem and and would have bet the farm that it was lost forever. And yet, there it was. My poem was just one of the forgotten treasures created by Grandma Peg's many grandchildren. In this scrapbook were drawings of stick figure people, animals, flowers and programs for school pageants. Each one of these trophies were proudly given to Grandma Peg to prove how smart or talented we all were. She in turn kept them in a book to prove how much she loved us. Learning that that she kept a poem I wrote 48 years ago was an emotional moment for me. It was one last "I love you," from a woman who told me that she loved me every single time we were together. 

I never knew the theme song had words

A poem by Jimmy Stewart

God Bless America on Veterans Day

I try to be a live and let live type of guy, but I am seeing a trend where anybody who shows patriotism is ridiculed and labeled a bigot, I see us losing many of the rights we took for granted and nobody seems to care. I am unsettled and not sure what to do about it. I've been look for a new direction to take this blog. For the time being I think I'll post videos like this. I don't if anybody will look at the next few entries, but a the very least... it makes me feel better.