View From The Road-Stan Hitchcock-November 23, 2012

Well, nothing ever stays the same, I know that, but sometimes you have to go look to make sure. My brother Sam and our wives drove out H Highway for me to take a nostalgia tour. As we approached different land marks that meant something to my growing up time, I would try to point them out, but of course, most of them are no longer there. Coming up on the Valley that we called Pleasant, and pointing to the places where our land would have started, in beautiful woods and sweeping fields....now stands with houses as far as you can see. Pleasant Valley Farms was 400 acres of prime property when my dad bought it in 1946. There was an old log house, covered then in clapboards, and an old barn on the verge of falling down, a creek that meandered through it, and H Highway ran right down the middle of it. My Grandparents,my Mothers folks, came from Kansas to move into the old house, to help dad with the farm, and Grandpa Johnson and my dad immediately started building the beautiful barn that is still there today. At the same time, dad started building our home, on a rise the other side of H Highway, and putting white board fence all around the property. It was a great place for an 8 year old boy to grow up in. Coming up, 5 years behind me, was my brother Danny, and when I was 15, my other brother, Sammy came along.

I left this Valley when I was 18 and headed for the Navy. Seems like I been leaving ever since, and today I felt like a stranger headin' down that old highway where I learned to drive, 60 some odd years ago. Oh, I come home ever now and then just to remind myself where I come from, but, more and more, it all changes and is hard to recognize where the growing up actually happened. I ran those mountains when they were nothing but virgin forest, full of wild life...now they are built up and gone. The creek looks pretty much the same and probably still holds more water snakes than you can shake a stick at, along with a few small catfish and an occasional small mouth bass. The house where I grew up has been built on to, but looks recognizable. Grandpa and Grandma's old place is long gone.

Driving on to where CC highway crosses H, I turned right and drove down to New Hope Baptist Church. The old original church, where i went as a boy, is long gone, and the newer church that my family helped build in 1950 is gone also, with a fine brick church there now. As I drove back behind the church to see the spot where the old church stood years ago, I thought of Brother Billy Pringle, who was our pastor in late 40's and early 50's, and then of his son, Marvin Pringle, who took over when Brother Billy retired. I loved them both, as precious servants of the Lord who had a profound influence on my early life, and who baptized me in Sac River when I was 12 years old.

Pleasant Hope, Missouri, is still a wonderful small town that just looks like home. The business places have mostly gone, but the spirit seems about the same. A cheeseburger at the Junction Cafe was as good as the ones at the Diner when I was growing up, and the folks just as friendly to me, a stranger from Tennessee just passing through. I was tempted to say "Oh, I'm from here and back in the day......uh, oh never mind" I could have told them of the day, in 1967 when the old town had "Stan Hitchcock Day" and I came in with my show and did a benefit and they had a three car parade down the main drag, all of 1 block long, but they have the right to make their own memories without some stranger trying to force his memories on them. My old school building is gone, and a new building in it's place. The road out of town is paved instead of gravel, where I wrecked my old 1936 Pontiac in 1952, playing tag, without any lights, with Bucky Goss and got found pretty hard.

We drove on out, heading back to Springfield, and my heart was kinda sad, missing the old days. But, a new day is here, I will live it to the fullest, be thankful and happy in all my blessings of life. My ancestors were all movers, explorers, pioneers moving West way early and always looking at the horizon, and you are what you are, you go where your heart leads you, and your heart follows the leading of the Lord if you are in tune and doing it right. Yes, I miss a lot of the old days, but I am a child of the times, taking what I learned from the old and trying to use it in the new days, not questioning the direction, only enjoying the trip and giving it the best that I know how.

A trip down memory lane is good, and grounds you in the reality of life, but to tell the truth, I'm pretty dang happy on my old front porch in the Tennessee mountains, with my good woman, my family, old Buck the Collie, my horses...and the creek that gurgles along, singing my song, on the way to the Cumberland River. "I will lift up my eyes unto the Hills, from whence cometh my help? My help cometh from the Lord who made Heavens and the Earth....." King David, you wrote it so well, your songs of Faith and Hope, and today it rings in my soul.
-Stan