"It was March 29, 1973, in Saigon. And Master Sgt. Max Beilke was officially designated as the last American combat soldier to leave Vietnam".

When they broke into the programs on television to announce that not only was the war over but the last American was out of harms way, I felt jubilant and extremely happy and I ran outside to blow the horn on my 63 Chevrolet Impala, but I noticed everything was quiet. People were not coming out of their houses. It seemed that no one wanted to celebrate the ending of the war that we quit without finishing.

When our boys went into a battle in Vietnam, no matter what the cost, they won it. It would be hard to find any action in Vietnam that was not appropriately dispatched by our servicemen and women. Anyone that thinks otherwise has been badly misinformed.
So when the war ended, I was not only happy about the fact that I would not have to worry about going to Vietnam and wondering if I would have what it took to be a soldier or not, but the biggest concern I had was that my friends, the people that I grew up with, would not have to go and die. I know that I was being selfish but I could not help it because I had seen the list of names grow every single day and when they started to be names that I knew it was both painful and scary. When it's just a story on a news program it doesn't mean as much as it does when it's Kelly, the young man up the street.

I celebrated the end of this war in Vietnam, then by myself and I celebrated it today because so many of my friends have families and are living wonderful lives because they didn't have to go to the rice paddies of Vietnam and they didn't have to give their lives, because of the brave men and women that served our country so valiantly and bravely, they did what had to be done and it saved so many.

I want to thank all of you who serve our country, whether it's the European countryside or it's in the rice paddies of Asia or the desert sands of the Middle East, from the bottom of my heart. I love you each and every one of you for what you do.

I also would especially like to thank the veterans from Vietnam for a job well done and take this opportunity to tell each and every one of you a heartfelt thank you and welcome home.

Just a River Rat

I grew up in an area where most people in our neighborhood had come from the farms and the mills of the upper Mississippi River Delta lands in Mississippi. They were all good, decent, hard-working people that loved their community, their children and they worked to make their communities a strong and loving place for their families. Because they came from the river deltas, they had these ethics instilled deep into their souls. I know this because I, too, am what I consider a “river rat”.

I want to take you back to the late 50’s, early 60’s, driving down Highway 78 to MS-15 to 64 South  to MS-346 West, in a ‘55 sky blue Plymouth, to a very small town called Hurricane, Mississippi, where my mother's family is from. I remember the first house I ever saw my grandparents in and, it may be strange to some of you, because it was built like a standard A-frame house with a roof over the bedrooms to the left and the kitchen and living room to the right, but there was no center part of the house. It was as if you put these rooms on the big huge deck and never built walls for the front and back. There was what we call in the South the breezeway right through the center. The bedrooms were fully enclosed and so were the kitchen and the living room and there was a big porch on the front and a similar porch on the rear of the house.

You have to understand that when these houses were built there wasn't any such thing as air conditioning and even if there was, they were sharecropper and they could not have afforded it anyway. The house was a stick frame house and the outside was sheeted with roofing material that looked like bricks, you know, just like a roofing shingle but all one big huge sheet that was made to look like bricks. The inside was sheet rocked, or at least stuccoed or some type of material that was paintable and wallpaperable.  The old potbelly stove sat in the middle of the living room and it was the only source of heat in the living room. None of the other rooms had heat other than propane standing space heaters with open flames. I don't even know if those type of heaters are allowed in today's society with all of the safety regulations that we have. I used to have a blast running all over that porch as a small boy with this old mangy Collie dog.

I remember family get-togethers that had all the men, brothers, brothers-in-law  and my grandfather sitting around the living room or out on the porch talking. All the sisters and sisters-in-law, my grandmother and all of the daughters and daughters-in-law were in the kitchen preparing some of the best food you could ever imagine. My grandmother made the best most moist pecan cake you could ever eat. It melted in your mouth and no one to this day makes frosting like she did. The women would start off fixing breakfast for all of us. The men would sit down at the table in the first setting and then all of us cousins would sit and eat after our fathers had eaten and lastly our mothers and our grandmother would sit and eat. This was the tradition for every meal that goes back to the days when men worked the fields and ate first, then the children came second and the women would eat last.

There would be arguments, there would be laughter, there would be all kinds of commotion going on in the kitchen as they washed the dishes from breakfast and started to prepare lunch for all of us. I remember it so well because of the smells and the tastes and they would run all us kids outside and tell us to go play. Most of the kids were either older or younger than I was, so I would take my cap pistol and my transistor radio and that old Collie dog, and go big game hunting in the pastures that were next to my grandparent’s home.

As that Collie dog and I ran as hard as we could into the pasture, I could hear my mother screaming out off the back porch ”you watch what you step in young man” , after all it was a pasture full of cows, don't you know. But I made sure that I didn't wander so far that I couldn't hear my uncle Jimmy yell “dinnertime”. One thing this little boy was, was never late when my grandmother was cooking dinner. I guess I really didn’t have to listen for my uncle Jimmy because the smells would come wafting up the hill of that pasture and I would know it was getting close to dinner and so did that old Collie dog because he knew there would be some biscuits and bacon fat and his dog food waiting when we got back.

It seemed no sooner had we gotten out there and started hunting big game that it was time we turned around and went back just as hard as we could go. What I'm getting at is the whole social interaction of my mother's family was wrapped around the kitchen and the appreciation of good food. The women of her family never passed on to me the secrets of what it took to make that food so special, but after years of trying, I got the secret of those old biscuits and that ultra-moist pecan cake, as far as the ingredients go, down pat. The one thing that I wish I had the secret to, was hearing the joy and, yes, sometimes the anger that they put into making them the most loving meals a family could ever have.

The river was a lifeline to all of these families because they needed the moisture to grow their crops and  because they needed to get their crops to the big cities and the markets that would pay the best prices for what they grew along the river.

That's why they needed to live near the river. These wonderful folks that I call “river rats” raised wonderful children and they, in turn, raised wonderful grandchildren, but we were all “river rats” because we needed the river to exist. All of the communities that grew up around the Mississippi River Delta at one time looked after each other and made sure that they at least had food and a warm place to sleep. It was this kindness and the strength of community that the families that made up the community that I grew up in, in Memphis, Tennessee, a loving and wonderful place to have a family.

When my family and I started out in this community it was known as Charjean because of the elementary school that we all went to and the park nearby that we all played at. My father was a member of the Charjean Civics Club, along with many of the other fathers from this community. They kept a close eye on what the planning commission had in store for all of us and they fought hard against the things that they did not want in their community and, also, just as hard for the things that they wanted in their community. The Charjean Civics Club sponsored baseball teams during the summer and tried to make sure that school supplies and things were gathered for the coming year of school.

Our mothers ran the PTA and had bake sales and anything else they could to make sure that the educational needs of their children were met. This was the norm until ground was broken on a brand new junior high school that would not only service the Charjean area but two other major areas known as Bethel Grove and Cherokee. For those of us now in our late 50’s and early 60’s this would combine those neighborhoods into a homogenized group known as the Airways Jets. Yes, I obsess over those years because those years were the years that I met Nancy, Sheila, Debhora, Debbie, Ricky, Mike, Donnie, Sidney, Eddie and many others that would take too long to mention, but they were all some of the most important people in the world to me in those days.  These kids that I grew up with were absolutely like family to me, not just because of my family’s strong family ties, but because all of their parents were also so dedicated to making our neighborhoods like a huge family.

I told recently the Superintendent that is in charge of the school system today in Memphis that we came from blue and brown collared workers and that our parents had pulled themselves’ up out of the fields of the Mississippi Delta to a community that they had worked lovingly hard to build and to be proud of, even though most of Memphis looked down upon us and that this school that was built just for us was our chance to show the city of Memphis that we could be a beacon of cooperation in education, in a city that was struggling to find how to educate its children and I think we succeeded to make ourselves an example for students to come.

I believe that I am a proud “river rat” who has accomplished much in his life but, without the help and love of so many people that I grew up with and the help of my God and my parents, I would never have achieved any of what I have achieved.

My loving wife has been my guiding inspiration and my light of love throughout the latter half of my life. When I have been so angry at someone that I wanted to tear their head off, I could see myself looking into her loving green eyes and all of that anger and hate would just melt away.

When things would get hard and I didn't feel like I could take that next step or lift that next heavy load, I would remember a man that was adorned with a crown of thorns and carried a heavy cross as he was beaten along his path to his death and my burden became light. I can still hear the women of my family talking and laughing as they talked about their old men. It's that love of life that they brought from those old houses with the breeze way through the center to keep them cool on the most extremely hot, muggy Delta days that gives me strength to carry on today.

All of this instilled in me a love of history that always made me want to have a piece of my history that goes back in these United States to the 1620’s. So, when I moved back to Tennessee, I decided that the perfect house for us would be a log house in the hills of the Great Smoky Mountains. This house was dedicated with the love and the blood of all my ancestors that came before me to make their house loving family homes.

That is what I want to have, the love of all those that made themselves a part of my family to make this Appalachian style log house our home.

Believe me, it is the memories of the love of my family and friends that has influenced me to do the right thing my entire life.

Who are You

I once heard a story about a young lady working on an assembly line at a plant in Memphis,Tn. building supplies for the war effort in 1943. When from behind her there were two Army Honor Guards carrying a letter framed in black.

One soldier reached out and tapped her on the shoulder because the assembly line was so loud that they could not be heard, she turned around and knew immediately what they were there for, and she grasped the letter and held it to her heart. The soldiers saluted her and grasped her hand and told her they were sorry for her loss.

The assembly line stopped all of the young ladies working on that assembly line gathered around her and once she had composed herself, she said to all of her companions we have to get back to work so that this never happens to any of you. Some 50 years later the young woman had grown old and had died, when one of her granddaughters was going through her things she found an unopened letter framed in black. The letter that was framed in black was addressed to her grandmother with the last name she had never known.

 I have no idea if that story is true, but there are so many of the greatest generation we have ever known are passing away without telling their stories for future generations to know, what they went through and who they were.

It's not that we want to pry into their private lives, it's that their families, there granddaughter needs to know why that letter framed in black was never opened.

Years from now when you are gone and your great granddaughter looks into your granddaughters eyes and ask who were your grandmother and grandfather? What will she be able to tell them? Have you told your story to your children or grandchildren? Do they know you played football or you were a cheerleader? Do they know in your younger life you were a member of the Allstate band? What, I ask you again what will they know to tell your great granddaughter? If you are not here to answer the question she asked and you never wrote it down or told anyone.

Memories keep us alive and happy, so I ask you to keep you with us for generations to come, share your precious memories of who you are with those you love.

Memories are the greatest gift we can give to those we love and future generations of those that will love us.

As a small boy I always wanted to know how things work, or what made them tick. I would take apart just about anything I could get my hands on and, I must admit, the first few things probably never went back together or if they did, they didn't go back together right.  After each thing I took apart I learned how things worked, how they were put together, so that I could put them back together and they would work. I remember my favorite toys were building toys such as girders and panels, where you had little replicas of steel girders that you could put together and square semi-square could be put together to make buildings such as skyscrapers. The panels would resemble windows and brick-and-mortar and various façades of buildings. They would snap onto the exterior of the girders to make the outside of the buildings. I had an uncle who was a mechanic that could fix just about anything. He inspired me to be something greater than what I was because I didn't get the encouragement from the people around me as I did from him.  Watching him fix cars was magical to me. How did he know how to fix them, what wizard powers did he have?

I figured out that I had a talent that few people had. I could read instructions and make things. I finally got to where I could look at something and either make a replica or fix it. It was kind of a connection between my brain and my hands, if I could feel it, I could understand it. It was almost like I could think with my hands better than I could think with my head. I grew patience for mechanical things and technology. The downside of this was that I grew impatient with people and things that I found frustrating, about what most people call normal life. I was always happiest when I could tear something apart and put it back together and it would work better. I remember I had three or four bicycles that were no longer working for one reason or another and I had a little bike that we called Stingrays back in my day. They had big slick rear tire with the normal size tire in the front. I looked at the parts of some of the older bicycles that I had that were 16 inch bikes and the tires were much bigger than those of the Stingray. I had always liked the fancy choppers that the motorcyclists had back in that day, so I thought I could use the front spoke of the bigger bike if it was interchangeable and if it fit in the front collar of the yoke of the smaller bike.

Without another thought I took both of the front yokes off of both bikes, taking the handlebars out, taking the handlebar shaft out and then undoing the collar, sliding it out and taking the bearings from one to the other and seeing if they fit, seeing if the bearings fit the shaft of the front spoke and they did. That made the front stand about 8 inches higher than it did before, even though it would accommodate a much larger circumference tire and rim, I left the smaller rim from the Stingray on it, which gave it more of a chopper look.

I don't want you to think that I had finished my alterations of this bicycle yet because I had not. I noticed that the sprocket was bigger on the 16 inch bicycle and the length of the rods from the pedal sprocket to the peddles was a few inches longer as well. This meant that it would change the gear ratio from the output of the chain to the smaller sprocket on the rear tire giving it more speed and torque. That's right, you've got it. I took it apart to see if it would fit and it did. I spent probably about the next 10 years of my life working on cars, in one form of another, helping my buddy Rick with any project he had with his racecar until I moved to Canada and married my Ursula. I had decided that even though I loved doing automotive electrical work, probably more than anything else I had ever done, when I worked for Tom Bell Chevrolet and Tim Fuss Chevrolet in Memphis. I decided to give it up and I went into auto parts and being a service writer, which I was also good at both of those jobs as well.

When I moved back to the US in the Smoky Mountains, my wife and I both changed professions again. I went into retail and she went into managing a hotel. I longed to have that creative sense that I had lost. I couldn't help myself. I wanted to be creative. It was a need-it was something that I had to do. I loved working on my computer and touching up photographs and working on videos. The computers that I was working with were commercially bought.  My first was a Sony back in 1999, but it just didn't have the power or speed or memory to do what I wanted to do. So my next one was an HP which was much faster and quite a bit better, but it too lacked what I needed. You guessed it,  I decided to build my own computer. It was the best decision I have ever made. I now have a six core, 3.7 GHz, 16 GB of DDR3 RAM, an Asus motherboard and an HD eyenfinity AMD 6770 graphics card. By the way, the graphics card is the weakest link, but for what I'm doing that graphics card is more than enough at this point. I also have 12.5 TB of storage for movies, pictures, stories or whatever I want.

As with everything that I do in my life, I find I have a fear of failing, so it takes me a long time to build up the courage to get started on any project I start. The only thing I think that I ever went head over heels deep into as far as a project was concerned with the building of our log house. I did have a contractor, but I worked on every single aspect of this house. I did 100% of the plumbing and electrical and they passed inspection and are still working some 27 years later. I put in all the windows and doors. I helped set the logs and even helped pour the foundation. So, to all the naysayers, including my father, to my abilities and intelligence, I have to tell you that it may have taken me years to find out, but I am as intelligent as anyone else. I tell you this with the frustrations of failure at times but I never gave up because I know this now, if a man built it, I can build it myself, if any man can do it, I sure as heck can do it myself. I now sell electronics and I guess they keep me around there because I know more about computers than they do, but the thing I love the most about what I do right now is I help people.

Entertainment is important to people that don't have a whole lot in this world and I can show them things that can get them entertainment for very little money. I can sell them computers that will do the things that they need to make themselves happy. I have helped people with computer problems fix their computers. It's not that I'm a computer genius, because I'm not. I can't write code and I don't want to. I can't reprogram their computer any more than they can, but if the worst scenario is true, I can still show them how to get their computer back to the point that it was when it was brand-new. I've taught people how to get viruses off of their computer, how to keep their computers clean and running smoothly.

It's not fixing the machine that makes me happy. It's the grandmother that can look at the picture she has stored on her computer of her grandchildren that she thought she had lost, thanking me with a smile. It was the lady at Christmas time that wanted somehow for her husband to be able to see the old Western movies that he once had enjoyed as a child and wanted to see now, but because of their bills with cancer and his surgeries, they didn't have the money to pay these ridiculously high cable bills. I showed her how, if they kept their Internet access, she could access at least five or more old Western channels on the Roku box and we both cried, her with the joy of being able to give her husband, in his remaining years, something he loves and me because it was a blessing from God.

I see so many people every day that are so angry and hateful and rude because they are miserable. I refuse to live that way. When I was brought into this world I had nothing and when I leave it I will have nothing.

So, I no longer am going to worry about it, what I have no control over, because I got my abilities in my brain and the knowledge through my hands from He who can fix anything. I am so grateful for the people and the things that pass through my life giving me wisdom and keeping my spirit true and clear because it is He that gives me the courage every day through the pain and the fear to carry on.

I have always said that our lives are the sum of the experiences, places and people we have met. They may not always be to our liking, but they make up a part of us. If any one of those experiences places or people would have been removed from our life we would not be exactly who we are. We were a product of the 60s. We grew up and went to school in the area that became Airways. The people we met in our life were both good and bad, I would like to believe the majority of them were good. This is not to say that family, faith and inspiration. Don't make up a part of who you are, because they do. It's not just one thing that determines who you become. it is the sum of everything that makes you who you are. I would not remove even my worst experiences or places that I would not return to. I especially would not remove any one that I ever met from my memory good or bad. I have loved and I have hated, but most of all, I have tolerated differences that annoyed me or made me sad, because I believe things happen for a reason. The experiences, places and people were different than I was as I confronted them, they made me a much better person and I'm sure that they had to tolerate me because I was different than they were. My point is that I never gave up and I kept moving forward and those annoyances have become some of my most favorite memories of all time. If you look for the best in people, you'll find it. If you ask for the worst in people, you will receive it. I tried to ask nothing of anyone else as much as humanly possible, because I expect nothing and when I get something in return, I am overjoyed and I am overjoyed with all of you that called me friend. I do not use the term friend lightly, so when I call you my friend,that puts you in a special place in my heart.

                   Airways Junior High School Passes In to History

I just learned that my junior high school in Memphis, Tennessee is closing and it will be taken over by a charter school. That means it will never carry the name Airways Junior High School ever again. It gives one pause when things that you loved are disappearing. People, places and things change constantly and we lose those that we love, but I never thought that the places that I loved as I grew up would disappear.

The little house that I grew up in and the streets all around my home were bought by the Memphis Airport Authority and all the homes were demolished. Absolutely nothing of the home that I grew up in exists and I have come to terms with that. The school that we went to in our neighborhood is no longer Airways Junior High School but was changed to Airways Middle School many years ago. I could live with that.  Now it's going to be a charter school and will no longer carry the name Airways. Now that is just inconceivable to me.

The first day that all of us entered our brand new school in 1969 for the first time to start the journey of the next three years of our lives was a challenge, to say the least. It was something different we had never experienced before. We were all the biggest bunch of misfits you had ever seen in your life. We were uncoordinated, uncouth, and a bunch of children without a clue of what awaited us in this new school of ours. Most of our teachers were young and it was their first permanent assignments. I'd be willing to bet that they had no idea what was in store for them either.

I think I was much like all of the students that went to this brand-new school that was built for us. I was bound and determined to be a major part of its history. I just never knew that I would outlast the history of our school. I knew that I didn't have the talent on the baseball field to be a star player, but I was 6 foot tall and 175 pounds in the seventh grade, so I knew that I could be a top football player in junior high school. No one, absolutely no one was ever going to cheat me out of being a starting player on that first football team at Airways. I never worked so hard in my entire life. I did everything that was asked of me by my coaches and their staff and I always tried to give them even more than what they asked for. We butted heads sometimes about some of the stupidest things but I respected and loved these men that I called coaches, Coach Winters, Coach Ramsey and Coach Bacon I would have walked across hot coals for these men and I still would. God bless them and keep them and give them the highest rewards in heaven because they deserved it for making men from little boys.

Every teacher that I had and even those I didn't have seemed to care about us. I truly don't think that they were there just for a paycheck. None of them ever gave me that impression. I even had some teachers that took extra time with me when I needed it. I never had teachers after I left Airways that ever did that. It's not that I think the teachers today don't care as much as they did. It's just that I think they were just as bound and determined to make something of this school just as we were bound and determined to make something of it ourselves. It takes both the students and the faculty with the backing of the parents to make a school work and without these three elements working side-by-side any school is bound to fail. We had the three elements, we had a great group of teachers and an eager student body and parents that were determined to make Airways Junior High School a great school for their children.

I started a Facebook page so that we, the alumni, of Airways Junior High School could reunite and talk amongst each other about the days when we were young and beautiful, back when the teachers were just as eager to learn as they were to teach us the wonders of the world, life, math and sciences. I dedicated the Facebook page to those of us, both students and faculty, that are no longer with us because we love them and miss them.

I found out that it's not the places that make the difference and is not necessarily that the people that you loved are still by your side, it is that the memories and love are embedded in your soul. If I only do one thing in my life, I wish it would be that I impress upon people that it is the memories of some of the most important things in life and that the people that made those memories made us who we are. The history that we made is only as great as the friends that walked beside us through our journey of growth and understanding. It is actually amazing that we all became friends because we were all so different, our loves and our passions were as different as night and day. I honestly think that that made us stronger and bound us together as a group.

Our school had all kinds of backgrounds, all kinds of races and we didn't care. We were taught not to care about what we were. We were taught to care about who we were. For that I am thankful.

So when I tell you that I loved the group of kids that I went to school with at Airways Junior High School I mean it. They were not only my friends, I grew up with them as if they were my family. Their parents were my parents and we all respected each other and each other's parents as if they were our own family. We did things for each other. Our parents did things for us and all of the kids in our neighborhood. My parents and my friends parents all worked hard to make money so that our junior high school would have things that we needed that were not going to be supplied by the Board of Education.

They even continued working for Airways Junior High School after we had left so that the kids in our neighborhood would still be able to have the things that they never had when they went to school. That's what made Airways Junior High School in our neighborhood work back in the days when we were growing up in the Charjean, Bethel Grove and Cherokee neighborhoods that united into one group when we all walked through that door for the first time at Airways Junior High School. I always felt like our neighborhoods had become one under the flag of Airways Junior High School.

What has happened to my television?

               What has happened to my television?

I know a lot of you watch reality TV.  So if you are a huge fan and love reality TV, this is not going to be for you. I have never liked reality TV from its inception. If they were after making the world a better place, they would never show reality TV because, in their reality, people are petty, vindictive, sneaky and just dishonest. These people should be ashamed to be a member of the human race when such shows as the housewives of whatever city they're showing tonight display some of the worst behavior in the world. They treat their partner like they are just a commodity. The cast members are overbearing and hateful to everyone around them and especially their spouses. I'm sure that some of you even let your children watch this kind of reality show but what kind of message does this send to these little boys and little girls? Is bad behavior what you want your children to think is normal.

There are shows where they have prospective brides or grooms that are looking to marry someone and there's either a harem of men or women trying to make the bachelor or bachelorette pick them. I have to say that that concept doesn't sound that bad, but when you see what these men and women will do to try and get the attention of the opposite sex, and what they will say and do to each other, it’s disgusting. Not only do they improperly seduce the person that they're trying to woo, but they lie, scheme and cheat to get their way to the top of the list. I guess that's why most marriages in this country end in divorce because, I'm here to tell you, that's not how it's done. The families that they pick to show in reality television are not from reality. The “Kardoofusses” are a disgrace to womanhood. Talk about women using their men to get where they want to be in life.

Don't get me wrong, it's alright to marry and partner with someone in life to get where you as a team want to be, that's fantastic. On the other hand, when your greatest achievement in life is picking a pair of shoes or seeing how much of your rather large backside you can show on television without it being censored, it is absolutely not being a partner in any marriage anywhere I've ever heard of. The way these women talk to their men is atrocious and the men's response to the women is no better. This applies to their so called friends as well. I don't think we should go back to Father Knows Best by any means, but don't you think reality shows should really have a little reality in them. Is this what you want your children to see.

Now there were recently 10 people killed in the crash of two helicopters in a French reality show called Dropped where they would drop the contestants in the middle of the worst surroundings in the world and see what it took for them to get back to civilization. Now I just want to ask you, is that scenario not asking for disaster to happen and do you think that your entertainment should be based on how dangerous it can be made for someone else. Shows such as Survived stupidity, the Amazing Rat Race and any of these other shows put people in various scenarios that could go horribly wrong and eventually will. David Michaels, Assistant Secretary of Labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration said," it's remarkable that production companies can use ultra-advanced technology to produce spectacular entertainment but too often they won't spend the modest amounts of money necessary to make sure their workers are not injured or killed on the job." Injuries and fatalities went down for a while in TV and movie production but recently injuries and fatalities have gone up again and it's been blamed on reality and situation shows such as these.  

I cannot stand to watch shows that pit people against each other to win enormous amounts of money and encourage them to do whatever it takes to win the game, however deceitful, malicious and wrong it may be. That is disgusting television, not reality television. It used to be we taught our children and ourselves and everyone we could teach that it's not whether you win or lose its how you play the game. This was preached to us when we played sports when I was a kid back in the 60’s and then as I got into high school, I could see it changing at the college levels where everything depended on whether you won that game or not. I don't know about you, but I don't want to teach my sons and daughters and grandchildren to do whatever it takes to win. It's not right and it's not ethical. I will give you a for instance.

There is a reality show where people travel throughout the world and they are paired off in two’s. One of the pairs accidentally left some money and some of their property lying around and another pair found it, and I want to make this part perfectly clear. The group that found the money and property knew exactly whose it was and they kept it and did not return it to the pair that had lost it. In any court in the world, if you take something knowing that it belongs to someone else, it is theft. I have never seen an apology or punishment shown or written anywhere from the pair that stole the money and property. I could go on and on about that one but it seemed to me that they should have been brought up on criminal charges whether it was only a TV show or not. They are now and for evermore criminals.

It should never in anyone's lifetime be alright to betray, connive, steel or hurt anyone to win a game, especially one that's being broadcast on television for everyone to see in prime time, including kids. I know you're thinking, well, not everything has to be for children and I do agree with you, but the thing that I want to impress on you is that kids are watching this sort of stuff. Women do not have to act like, well excuse me I hate this word but I can't think of a better word to use (and I have already cleaned it up), harletts, to get their way in this world. Men do not have to treat their women poorly either and they do not have to cheat on their spouses. You don't have to lie and steal to get your way in this world and unfortunately the shows are teaching just that.

I am not a prude, I do know that these things go on and they're done every day, but why must we subject ourselves to this and call it entertainment. Is a life worth the entertainment value that the shows give you, is it worth teaching young girls to act like the women in these shows, is it really good values to put winning first before anything else. If the producers of these shows think that I am too harsh then why did they publicize the fact that this couple that stole the money was not punished nor were the people that lied or cheated? In other reality shows people were also not punished because of evil acts that they were the perpetrators of. If you say well that's what makes it fun then I want to ask you what has happened to your values. I remember when I watched television when someone stole something from someone else they were brought to justice. On today's TV landscape, if you steal something for somebody, you're rewarded and they say you were thinking out-of-the-box. Seems to me you had your fingers in someone else's box where they shouldn't have been. I hear so many times people say let's put God back in our government. I say before we put God back in our government. Let's put God back in our lives and demand that these types of shows cease and desist with immoral and unconscionable acts. Seems to me when someone should be voted off the island, it would be because they had cheated and connived and went behind each other's backs. I know a lot of you will dislike what I have written, but I can't help how I feel and I feel that the shows are tearing down the moral conscience and compass of our country.

If Andy Griffith had done something wrong and little Opie Taylor confronted his dad about it, he was man enough to admit he had done wrong and would make it right. In today's TV, it would have been accepted because the end result justified the means. God help us when our favorite shows on television have no morality at all. What is the world of entertainment coming to.

Love is all you need

I saw a movie a little over a year ago that just blew me away. This movie tells a story of an older generation giving up their country, because the cost of living was too great there and they had no other choice. It also involves the dreams of a young man wanting to start a hotel and his dreams of sharing his world and happiness with those that were in the last quarter of their lives. The collision of cultures was hilariously heartwarming and the love of life in one's Golden years gives one hope that the world has not forsaken the treasures of old age. 

Today I went to see the sequel of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and I have never been a huge fan of badly made sequels and this movie is definitely not a badly made sequel, as a matter of fact, it is probably one of the best I have seen lately. This time the movie is not a clash of cultures, but a clash of generations, one generation trying to leave a legacy of knowledge to the younger generation and the younger generation trying it's best to start a life of its own. Too many times movies are made with nothing but special-effects artists writing the story without any regard for the deeper story of the human experience. I know the stories that I have read may sound like they are about one thing or another but when you pull them down to their basics, they are always about the human condition and our striving for happiness. Almost every story written is about the one thing that we as humans need more than anything else - love. If you want to boil down anything in this world to its basic properties it will contain love. I believe that our Creator put in us the need for love and companionship for a reason. I believe that stories like this hold our interest not because they're about another land or time or witchcraft or fighter pilots or no matter what the story really is all about, its underlying message is that we are human and we love and need to be loved. I am and always have been a romantic.

There are myriad loves in this world to be had and we start with the first one, the love of our mother and as we grow we find love from every corner of our life, from friends and relatives, in the people that we choose to share life with, to the one that we have chosen to be that special one to grow old with. Growing old with grace, dignity and love is what this movie and its sequel were all about. So if you haven't seen The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel you need to and, once you have, you definitely need to see the sequel, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. I give it my personal recommendation. Thank you my friends for listening.

Rockin

Okay, I'm bringing this to y’all and y'all can tell me if I'm crazy, and if I'm making this up. I'll start by telling you that every time I do a search for this particular genre of music,

no matter what program, radio station, internet search engine I go to, I get something stupid that doesn't sound anything like what I'm asking for. I grew up in a time that there were at least four or five different genres of music being played on the top 40 stations at any given time.

I had two specific favorite genres of music that I truly loved. The first one was flower power music, of course I could be wrong, it could only be in my brain, but I swear I understood this music came from people like Donovan, Arlo Guthrie, Sonny and Cher and groups like the Lovin’ Spoonful, the Mamas and Papas, the Byrds, and many others. In my mind I can remember it being war protest music, some folk rock and mixed into it some psychedelic music and it came from a specific time in the 60’s. Please don't tell me that I'm crazy. I know this genre of music existed in my time, I'm sure of it.

Then from that flower power music there came a renaissance of folk music in the form of folk rock that not only started in the 60’s but lasted on into the 70’s. I put searches in for these genres of music in Slacker, Pandora, Jango and other streaming music services and it comes back with some of the strangest stuff imaginable that had nothing to do with the 60’s. I think it's because most of these music streaming and music search engines are done by young people that have no clue what any other kind of music besides rap, hip-hop and all of that crap is. So if you search for anything that was done before 2010 you're just basically out of luck. The radio stations of today play a total of 20 different songs and from one day to the next they're playing the same exact things over and over again.

I know if you had a radio station you could play every hit song from 1956 up until 1999 and you would not have to play the same song again till next year. There are so many songs that were in the top 10 that were great pieces of music. Why are we not hearing this on the radio stations today? I personally think payola has taken over the music industry of today. I remembered a time when you could turn the radio on and feel happy with what was being played for a whole day. Now I turn the radio on and I turn it back off or I turn it to NPR or I turn it to a news station.  I can't get over how these kids of today are listening to songs that sound exactly the same as every other song that's recorded today.  No one today has their own sound, all the artists sound exactly the same and the reason is because most of them cannot sing and you can tell who they are by how much echo is being produced so that you can't hear their mistakes.

I did recently though have an extremely pleasant surprise when Lady Gaga actually sang a medley from the Sound of Music and she did an extremely good and almost flawless performance. Lady Gaga (and I certainly hope that wasn't the name that her parents gave her) was overwhelmed with the standing ovation she got and she deserved. I think a lot of what is going on today is that the artists are afraid of the criticisms that would come their way if they miss a note in a live performance and that is wrong, because it is sometimes the flaws that are in our voice and in the things that we do that makes us pleasantly different.

This reminds me of the time when they were making the Canadian version of We Are the World called “Tears Are Not Enough” by Northern Lights and it came time for Neil Young to sing his solo part. After he did so and he was asked to do it over again because he was flat, he simply replied “that's my sound man”. I laughed so hard because I knew that, that was what made Neil Young so special was his particular sound.

I am a music lover and I love to hear someone that can sing, sing, but if you're going to recite poetry like the beatniks did back in the coffee shops in the 50’s, don't dare call it rock 'n roll and don't expect me to honor your achievements in the rock 'n roll Hall of Fame, because it ain't rock. Some of the things that they have to say are poignant and very well written, but for it to be a song in my opinion, you have to sing it not speak it. I'm sure I'm like everyone else.

I like good poetry, but I am also like the Beatles when they were asked about their poetry, Paul McCartney comically replied “I ain’t writ no poetry”, and I'm sure that was because they were songwriters and they sang the words that they had written for their music. I can listen to opera, classical music, gospel music, blues and soul music, not to mention other genres of music. Why is it I can't find my favorite types of music, folk rock and flower power music anywhere anymore, or did the music really die?

All of these young people that have never heard the great lyrics and music of our day have no idea how great music can really be or what they’ve missed by being born too late. The streaming stations need to hire a couple of old hippies to program their music for those of us that still love it, even in our late fifties, sixties and so on. I’m available. Call me.

I have always been a fan of the old black-and-white movies from the 30’s 40’s and 50’s. My favorite actress was Bonita Granville because she was the Nancy Drew of the 1930’s Warner Bros. pictures.

Bonita Granville was probably my first crush because she was so stunning in the outfits that they put her in, in those 1930’s Nancy Drew pictures. I always wished that I could meet her and tell her what a great influence she had an old my life with those wonderful pictures and the character of Nancy Drew who she made her very own. No other actresses come close to portraying Nancy Drew in the manner in which she did. She gave the young female sleuth a brain but yet a comical clumsiness of a young teenage girl. Unfortunately Bonita Granville died in 1988 and I never got to meet her but I did meet the young man that played her sidekick in the Warner Bros. movies.

They called him Ted Nickerson but in the books that the movies were based on he was called Ned Nickerson. The only reason given for this change in names was that Ted sounded friendlier than Ned. The Nancy Drew series from Warner Bros. consisted of only four movies starting with the first one which was the only movie based directly off of one of the original Nancy Drew books, “Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase”. The other three movies were original screenplays based on the character of Nancy Drew. The second in the series was “Nancy Drew Troubleshooter”, then came “Nancy Drew Detective” and “Nancy Drew Reporter”.

My favorite in the series was the very first, it seemed to have a bit of the old-fashioned dark house mystery about it, which I guess is why it was so popular with younger viewers and readers of the Nancy Drew series. Nancy Drew was played by Bonita Granville, Ted Nickerson was played by Frankie Thomas, Carson Drew, Nancy's father was played by John Litel, the Drew housekeeper Effie Schneider was played by Renie Riano, Capt. Tweedy was played by Frank Orth and many other actors and actresses that did such a wonderful job bringing the character of Nancy Drew to life.

Unfortunately at the time that I met Frankie Thomas it was only just a few short years before he passed away.

He did his best to remember a few small stories of what transpired back in the days he was shooting on the set of the Nancy Drew movies. He was an extremely gracious man. I have at least four or five autographs from him. I can't tell you how grateful I am to have met someone from the Nancy Drew series of movies. He also played Tom Corbett Space Cadet in the 1950’s TV sci-fi drama series. I think that most people were there to talk to him about Tom Corbett since he was at the show for the Solar Guard, which is a group of actors and actresses that played astronauts and so were explorers in the early days of TV.

The first show that I went to there were just a few of the Solar Guard there, maybe 4 or 5 people. By the time I had gone to the last show there was only one member of the Solar Guard left. Frankie seemed somewhat happy that someone was asking him a question about something other than the solar guard and I could see he was struggling to try and remember something of the Nancy Drew series. That first year that I saw him he had only one or two photographs from the Nancy Drew series, the next year he had five or six photographs from the Nancy Drew series and I had him autograph a picture with me and him together. Even though it was just a brief encounter I am so very thankful that I had the chance to meet him and speak with him. Frankie Thomas passed away in 2006.

I also met the young lady that was Bonita Granville's maid of honor at her wedding. The young lady that I met had played Mickey Rooney's girlfriend in the series of Andy Hardy movies and also had a major role in “Gone with the Wind”. Ann Rutherford was a wonderful young lady. She told me that she was Bonita Granville's maid of honor at her wedding and that she and Bonita had remained friends from their early days at Warner Bros. until Bonita's death in 1988 and, unfortunately, we also lost Ann Rutherford in 2012.

I also met another actor from the Nancy Drew series, Dickie Jones, who had also played in many Westerns from the early 1930’s all the way up into 1965. He remembered a little more about shooting with Bonita Granville in those early Nancy Drew movies and we talked about them and he was extremely grateful for the opportunity to speak about a movie that he enjoyed doing. Dickie Jones died in 2014.

The Nancy Drew series from Warner Bros. will probably never be noted as a great series, but it was important and it was a good set of movies that a young boy watched for the first time on the WREC Channel 3 in Memphis, Tennessee’s Early Movies that came on around three o'clock every weekday afternoon. That's where I gained the love of these old black-and-white movies that didn't have any special effects, let alone any computer special effects. They relied heavily on story and acting ability of the actor’s interpretations of the characters. There were so many of these B-movie actors and actresses that never won any awards, that never got any accolades and I think that's one of the reasons that you could find them at these autograph shows signing autographs and reliving their glory days in Hollywood.

I have only mentioned the Nancy Drew series, but there were so many more such as Sherlock Holmes, Charlie Chan and so many more that I truly loved to sit as a child and watch. I was captivated with William Powell and Myrna Loy as they portrayed Nick and Nora Charles in the “Thin Man” series. I laughed at the antics of Tony Curtis in Cary Grant in Operation Petticoat. I loved and still do love good movies.

 I even love one of the so-called worst movies ever made, “The Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow”. The movie is, by all means, not a great movie as far as the script is concerned, but what transpires within this movie is a sad piece of movie history and it is why I love this movie so very much.

The storyline is that a group of kids that have a hot rod car club need a clubhouse and one of the girls father's clients is a close friend of the family and she is willing to donate her house at Glen Canyon Hollow better known to the kids as Dragstrip Hollow, but they have to understand that the place is haunted.

The haunting is done by a special effects artist that was discarded by Hollywood when no one was going to see the horror movies that he was making creatures for anymore. The special effects artist was haunting the house in one of his costume creations that you might recognize as the She Creature with the bosoms removed so that it looked more like a male creature. One of my great thrills when I saw this movie for the very first time was that the creature removes the mask to reveal who the special effects artist was and it was Paul Blaisdell who himself was discarded by Hollywood when American International Pictures went to the beach party movies. American International Pictures for the last time did the schlock old dark house style teenage exploitation movie and started making the beach party movies with Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon and the gang. Even though I love those beach party movies, you kind of feel sad at the end of this picture, I was watching the end of the magical era in movie history.

I, with the help of my wife, tried to collect autographs from everyone that ever made me feel happy, scared or made me think while watching one of their movies. I have some TV actor’s autographs as well. One of my prized possessions is a collection of autographs from the Mickey Mouse club serial Annette, starring Annette Funicello. Walt Disney, in his wisdom, picked a group of kids to do the Mickey Mouse club and work on the serials that would also accompany the Mickey Mouse Club. The serials were a great part of what made the Mickey Mouse Club successful, especially with the Adventures of Spin and Marty, the Adventures of the Hardy Boys and the Annette serial. It was amazing what they could do on TV in those days. You may like your reality TV shows but I have to tell you I would take Spin and Marty over every single one of them. You may think that the Kardashian women are beautiful, but give me Annette Funicello any day over the lot of them.

You know I have almost 300 channels now and I can flip through channels for hours on end and never find a single thing to watch that I enjoy. In the early days of television we had three, maybe four channels at any given time to choose from and I can remember all of my family fighting to see what we were going to watch that night because all three networks had extremely good programs on at the same time. There was a lot to be said for the old black and white TV, but I don't really miss not having color television. I remember going over to a friend of mine. His name was Ray and he invited us over to see Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color and I took him up on it.

I was blown away with the fact that television was broadcasting in living color, it was fantastic. There was no turning back now, television was going to improve in spite of those that said it would burn your eyes out to sit and watch color television all day.

It's not that I long for black and white TV and I don't agree with those that say it's wrong to colorize black and white movies or TV shows, because so often when you colorize these programs they look so much better. Someone once said that Frankenstein would not be as scary in color. I think they are nuts. If you have ever seen Boris Karloff in the Frankenstein makeup in color you would agree with me. It was horrifying. A lot of people say that it takes the mystery out of the film or movies and I disagree. It's not that the color is missing,

it’s that they were filmed darker with less light. I have always been a proponent of the widescreen TV’s so that we would no longer have to pan and scan to see our favorite widescreen movies because it does hurt the storyline to re-edit what the viewer actually sees of the complete picture, but what I say to those that are against colorization is that there's a lot lost in the actors emotion without color because you cannot see as much of the facial structure and emotion in black and white. I also think that there's a lot lost in the beauty of a young face on the screen when the definition is so bad that you can't see the freckles or the dimples and someone like Shirley Temple's beautiful face. High definition brings out every single flaw in an actor’s face and I know a lot of the actresses are thinking that they will not be as beautiful to us if we can see their flaws. I believe it's the imperfections in our faces and in our being that makes us beautiful. When I see a red headed young lady that has packed the makeup on to hide the freckles.

I want to stop her and tell her that it’s the freckles that make her attractive and beautiful.

I don't really care if you colorize something or not. I don't really care if you pan and scan something or not. What I care about is that we are still making good movies. Someone once said that the job of the movie is to enlighten, to stir the emotions and to create change. I personally think whoever said that is full of themself, because movies are meant to do two things. They are meant to entertain us and make money.

 I was appalled last year when the Butler was snubbed for Oscar nominations. In my opinion it was one of the best movies of 2013. Forest Whitaker had one of the best roles of his life and he did it right. This is not the only movie that I have had an argument with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences about the fact that they seem to care more about artistic value than they do about what people really like.

It's about time that the box office also had a say in the Oscars. No one can win a gold record unless they sell enough recordings of a particular song or album. So why is it that someone wins an Oscar for a movie that no one's ever seen? Yes, I know that it's about actors honoring actors, but aren't we all actors at heart. Actors are selling themselves as someone else on the screen and when the salesman tries to sell you a vacuum cleaner, he is also selling himself and both the actor and the salesman are trying to do their best to earn your money. So why is it that when they learn of that money, it doesn't affect what happens at the Oscars?