We continue our story about Ol’ Pap this week. It was on a winter day not long before Pap died that some of the local folks were sitting inside the old Derby store. The talk was about how cold it had been that year. Ol’ Pap spoke up and said, “This here cold snap, why, it ain’t nothing compared to how cold it used to get in Avery County. Maybe...
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One of my wife’s granddaddies, Pap, as his children used to call him, was raised a-top the Great Smokey Mountains in Avery County, North Carolina. Pap came up the hard way, as did most of the mountain people of his time. Ol’ Pap had come from good stock as his father lived to be a hundred and three and had walked six miles to town and back the day he died....
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As we walk on the ground, we may never discover what lies beneath our feet. Why, it could be something that has been lost for years or something the Good Lord placed there in the beginning. Sometimes when large excavating is going on, entire villages of long ago might just start revealing themselves. Sometimes human or animal bones from centuries past are...
Read MoreSeveral years back, I had a heart attack and had to have bypass surgery. When I went for my follow-up visit, I was told that I had clean pipes. This turned out to be wrong and I had to have another catheterization. Seems I had another blockage that was going to be treated with medicine. Between the medicine and the good Lord, my artery found itself a new...
Read MoreYou know, I’ve found when we look back through our family tree, we can almost always find some interesting characters. Why, I had a cousin named Ben. Seems Ol’ Ben had served in the army during World War II and when he got home, he opened a service station. Along with pumping gas and such, he managed to do a little mechanic work at his small station. In...
Read MoreLast week’s story ended with my mule going to Washington, but I had to have something to work my garden with, so I got me one of them mechanical mules. You know, the kind that has a big tire in the back and the little tire in front and a Briggs & Stratton motor on top. The first time I used that thing it worked fine till I got to the end of the row....
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