Stan Hitchcock-View From The Front Porch-April 28, 2013

Well, it is a glorious Sunday morning, the flash flood rain has moved on to the Southeast, leaving us mighty soggy, but looking forward to a good Lord's day. Must have rained about 4 inches, yesterday, here at the old farm house, getting the creek pretty excited and running out of it's banks, but now sorta relaxing and flowing, still brim full, on down to the Cumberland.

As we get back from joining our friends, neighbors and brothers and sisters in Christ, at our First Baptist Church in Gallatin, Tennessee, where the word is still preached, without fail, every Sunday morning, it is good to still be living in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Our mockingbird, perched on the arm of the hammock, in the front yard, is going through his vast reparatory of songs, bent on impressing some female mockingbird for a little Spring time romance. He’s doing one that sounds a lot like an old Roy Acuff tune, and it probably will not work on the female. I know, it never did work for me when I sang it, sitting parked on the gravel bar of the Sac River, moon coming up over the trees, hitting the chords just right on my untrained fingers, trying to get that old Appalachian whine into, “Who did you say it was brother, who was it fell by the way, when whiskey and blood run together, did you hear anyone pray?” Yessir, “Wreck On The Highway” was not considered a romantic ballad to the girls at Pleasant Hope High. I was surprised to find that out, but I never quit trying. The comment usually was, “Don’t you know no rock and roll songs?” Ya’see, this new stuff they were talking about, rock and roll, well, I just never did get into it. No, I was into Webb Pierce, Carl Smith, Hank Williams, Johnny Horton, Johnny and Jack, Red Foley, Ernest Tubb, Kitty Wells, Little Jimmy Dickens, Roy Acuff, Martha Carson, The Davis Sisters, Ferlin Husky, you know, that old country music. Never could figger out why it didn’t set a romantic mood on the river bank, oh well, different strokes for different folks.

Boy, that ol’ sun really feels good, on the front porch, today. You can almost hear the grass growing after yesterdays rain…yes, there it was again…I can hear the grass growing….kind of a ripping sound as it springs forth from the wet ground…oh, never mind, that was my neighbor starting up his weed eater. But, if it hadn’t been for that, I’ll bet I could hear the grass grow, by golly.

Uh-huh, I can hear some of you folks saying, we need to get help for poor old Stan, he’s slipped over the edge…well, I ain’t slipped over quite yet….give me a couple more weeks.

Stan