To Hear Me Tell It

Send us Fan Mail As adults we have a bound responsibility to employ intrusive leadership to help younger ones realize and reach their potential.  Hindsight being what it is, I look back and see where several folks from Butler Georgia made an impactful positive influence upon me, whereby they had a hand in my career path.  Mike Hammack, Vernon Reddish, Jim Willis, and for sure Everett Byrd were ins...

Send us Fan Mail Back in the 60's and 70's, the Butler Courthouse Square was the place to be on Saturdays.  Folks would come to town to do their weekly shopping.  They'd come to their goods, gas, water, and food.  Some came to grab a bag of them delicious Turk Burgers, or the daily special at The City Cafe.  Others came to buy a new much needed pair of bib overalls at Mathews Store,...

Send us Fan Mail Life has a funny way of working out.  I'm inclined to say God is without question the driver; however, I do believe when God isn't looking, luck may sway in on occasions now and then.  Whatever the case, when I got the grade of being  Senior at Taylor County High School, it was Lola Russell who convinced me that I really did need to learn how to type.  Now mind you, this...

Send us Fan Mail It got a bit uncomfortable sitting under the US White House being drilled by some FBI Agent about the stupid stuff I had done while growing up in Butler GA back in the 70's.  Yep, this ole' boy knew far more than I imagined.  Hell, he knew things I done forgotten.  But I wouldn't trade the night me and my great friend Dwayne H. Taunton got spotted painting the Butle...

Send us Fan Mail Going to Panama City Beach back in the early 70's was just plain cool, and a ton of fun.  Life back then was much simpler, and we had no thoughts or worries about being hit by a car, mugged, or accosted by some pervert.  We walked at night for miles to get to the Miracle Strip.  We ate hotdogs are Wiener King, we rode every ride a dozen times, and played Skee-Ball until our d...

Send us Fan Mail My lovely bride and wife of some 35 plus years has endured much for marrying a Southerner.  Her being a Yankee and all, which Daddy never let up on her, always calling her "Yankee Girl" rather than by her name.  If Daddy only knew how much that got under her saddle, and caused me a many of nights of going without, you know what I mean.  Anyway, back in 1987, Mama took it...

Send us Fan Mail God bless Mama!  On more than one occasion she caught me smoking between the ripe ages of 6-9 years old.  Now, Mama smoked, and Mama smoked a lot.  Most folks who knew Mama will agree, the old Gal' always had a cup of coffee and a cigarette had, and when she was mad at me, she'd put that smoke between her lips, grip it tightly (so as not to lose it), balance the coffee w...

Send us Fan Mail Life is all about learning and applying what we've learned.  And having to learn why not to aggravate and agitate someone's dog by poking sticks at him through a fence, well let's just say:  "every dog gets his day."  And my day came around when that dog settle a score with me.  A score that was rightly so and just, and a score that needed settling that&ap...

Send us Fan Mail There wasn't a great deal of information regarding consumer safety and health back in the sixties.  Hell, drinking hard whiskey and smoking was promoted and sometimes even recommended.  One hasn't hasn't changed in the last ten thousand years, damn mosquitos are still a darn nuisance.  I recall when Everett Byrd forced me to read the book Absalom Absalom, there was...

Send us Fan Mail What are the odds?  That on day one in the US Navy, I'd learn that my Company Commander's name is Daniels, he's black and wants to know if he and I are related.  Also, I learned that racism was indeed alive and well, but I also learned that it was tolerated in the slightest.  "Mama Mama can't you see, what the Navy's done to me."  Jimmy Largent a...

Send us Fan Mail Many have asked me to share how I come about enlisting in the US Navy.  I'd like to say it was for just one reason: however, that's not the case.  There were many reasons of motivators which lead for me deciding to leave Butler for the US Navy.  I had all reasons to stay at home, attend some local college (if I could have even gotten in), and taken the grocery store, mar...

Send us Fan Mail I'm sure Yellow Jackets serve a useful purpose, or God wouldn't have made these critters.  And we all know that God don't make mistakes, but sometimes I think maybe the good Lord got a bit a distracted on the plan for these fellas.  And unlike most hornets or wasps, they sap-suckers build their dang nests in the ground so some poor unsuspecting fella like me and Chr...

Send us Fan Mail I confess that my childhood is comprised of a many of events where I thought it would be funny, but others didn't seem to share my passion or enthusiasm at the moment of delivery.  If don't believe, just ask Jack McGlaun, which is another story within itself.  Playing Possum or putting a ghost in your Sister's room  while she's having a sleep-over with some gir...

Send us Fan Mail Working for Mr. Walter Wilson at his gas station back in 1979/1980 was a highlight of my youth.  Lots of great memories of my friends cruising the town on Friday nights.  The glow of the lights from the Seven-Eleven store, the blinking railroad crossing lights with the train horn a blaring, and with bouts of Boston, ELO, Willie Nelson, and Lynyrd Skynyrd from which car was making...

Send us Fan Mail Good advise, "Don't pick up Hitch-Hikers."  And be darn sure you don't pick up Hitch-Hikers what are Hookers running down the Interstate being chased by a fella wearing a cheap leisure suit firing a pistol.  As my good friend Ralph Fitts would say: "What could possibly go wrong."   If my Mama only knew.

Send us Fan Mail Nope, children don't come with an Instruction Book, and in the pre-internet days we only had God, family, and Dr. Spoke to lend to what was to become.  Laura and I being a career military family, we were hard pressed to go at this alone, and boy did we learn a lesson.  Hell, I was a Chief Petty Officer in the US Navy, and I figured that some muscles were just natural.  Sorta&...

Send us Fan Mail As a young fella' not all things go as planned.  At least not for me.  Whether it was slapping  the wrong girl on the tail, waking up Mama with Smelling-Salts, or putting a noise/smoke thing on a man's car, some things just didn't go as planned or as I had hoped.  Well the same holds true for the time at the old age of six years old,  I felt compelled to pay some ho...

Send us Fan Mail Wouldn't it be great if all the Doctors had to experience what they performed.  There was a time when after a particular surgery (a procedure most folks don't like to talk about), I stood mentally prepared for what the Doc said would be coming a day or two later.  But believe me when I say, and to hear me tell it,  that ole' boy obviously ain't never had to rid...

Send us Fan Mail Anybody that's ever gone through enlisted military training knows all too well what happens the first week in Basic Training, a.k.a. "Boot Camp."  Everybody catching and spreading the Crud and getting spread, poked, stuck, and examined from heat to toe.  And it didn't matter whether it was getting the first hair cut, being issued your first set of uniforms and...

Send us Fan Mail Sometimes Daddy and I learned things together.  Whether it be fishing or bird hunting, I was learning a bunch and was he.  However, I bet there times  Daddy was wondering why the good Lord had punished him with a son like me.   It was a blistering hot day in Butler Georgia, the grass needed cuttin' in front of the grocery store, and on this day it took two mowers to get the j...

Send us Fan Mail Truth be told, we did dumb stuff.  Some of us got trophies, or nickel size knots on our heads, but whatever the case, we're all graduates of the School of Hard Knocks.  And the fact that we it made out alive: well, that's on account we were just plain lucky, or God was training a new Angle and had given them a special project of protecting idiots on earth.  Yep, you must...

Send us Fan Mail Life's lesson are treasures, and boy did I get some learning growing up at the Grocery Store back in the day.  I learned many things, and some the hard way, but lessons nonetheless.  Putting Baking Soda in Mama's coffee is never a good idea, especially on a busy Saturday at the Buter Red & White.  And throwing raw eggs against the back of the store wasn't one of...

Send us Fan Mail Like most siblings growing up, my Sister and I had our shares of spats, many escalating  to all out brawls.  I'm talking about duke it out bloody noses, black eyes, torn clothes and missing hair plug-knots.   Fights that resulted in Mama having to slip on her Boxing Ref shirt,....sorta' like Superman putting on his cape, and jump in.  Mama had a unique way of calling bre...

Send us Fan Mail How all this got started.  My wife Laura decides that I needed to start a Podcast on account I tell so many stories from my lifetime of experiences.  Growing up in "By God" Butler GA, the son of a very hard working Grocery Store owner, (The Butler Red & White), to pumping gas at the local Exxon Station, to running off and enlisting in the US Navy, where I served some...