When last we left Ray and Steve they were getting ready for Ray to cut a demo at a Pickens County recording studio. The demo went well and it set Steve back $45. Their next stop had to be Nashville! But, the fellas at the studio had doubts about Ray’s reliability. It might have had something to do with the smell of Jim Beam around Ray’s cowboy collar. Read More→

   Easley, SC 1980’s–The good thing about coasting over the hill is there are many awful experiences for me to look back on with a chuckle.  My first late husband, Steve, was an animal lover, wild, domestic, or farm, cheap or expensive, he surrounded himself with the animal kingdom.  Read More→

Dateline 2006–Winston-Salem, North Carolina–My sister’s North Carolina church, Calvary Moravian, is home to the youngest pastor in the Southern Province to be named a Bishop. Their dear departed secretary referring to his“fortyish” age, affectionately named him,“Baby Bish.” Read More→

Visits to my childhood home often bring me face to face with memories of growing up with a sister seven years older and wiser than me.  Bestowing this compliment will perhaps get me out of trouble with her at a later date. Read More→

All of my home state of North Carolina is divided by its barbecue. Proudly, I hail from the tomato base region of Winston-Salem.  As a child, mustard based barbecue had no place on our dinner table. Read More→

I got my computer back, (again), I have Malware, McAfee, and a firewall that Internet Explorer 8 throws into the mix, I have an efficient back up program that took 3 days to back up my work. (I can get my ‘back up’ in way less time than that.)  I have everything, but Nehemiah’s wall on here, and I’m praying for that.

Way back when I had no age spots and a mouse was really a mouse and spam was really Spam we referred to a really bad week as ‘the week that was’. This was truly the case this past week. I started the week with the recall of a part on my car. Since  I don’t have anything else to do during the complete remodeling of our house on the outside and the inside, I was ecstatic at the Read More→

I am now submerged in the sawdust of remodeling our house. We have a wonderful and very hyperactive builder. He’s been on the job for less than a week and so far one wall and a deck have been knocked down, a new closet framed and enclosed, a cement slab poured, two walkways cleared and footers placed for their cement to be applied soon. We’re also now missing three windows that will soon be morphed into cabinets.

The day of the missing windows escapade I decided to go to my sink to brush my teeth. As I bent over to spit, I looked out through what I thought was still a window and nearly bumped heads with the workman on the other side. We were no longer separated by glass, I was brushing my teeth in ‘real time’ six inches from his face. We’ve become family now, I know when Andy’s wife had her birthday. The rest of the crew: Jimmy, Roger, Bernie, and Danny, are like kissin’ cousins. One day, I’ll look back and laugh over the interrupted naps, cold food, and the angst of decisions, decisions, decisions. Writing can be a real challenge in an atomosphere of sledge hammers and power drills. Pray for me in the next few months to dust off the sawdust and find my voice again!

With little money and a husband with the disposition of a cheetah in tight shoes, my former mother-in-law qualified for sainthood long before she met her Maker.  Lillian Masters Massey came from, “Coon’s Creek”, the home farm of Charity and Sylvanus Masters.  As a child, she walked the four miles to old Reunion School in Pickens County and rarely took more than an over the counter drug for a cold.

“Some people enjoy poor health and that’s why they stay sick. It’s the attitude ‘dahhlink’ (darling)–the attitude!” She loved to dabble in a German accent for fun. Read More→