GOOD MORNING, FRIENDS

A REMEMBERAMBLE FOR WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2025

Once more we have survived a night, awakened to see that we have lived to embrace yet another morning. Younger me would never have penned that previous sentence. As we age, we come to be more mindful of how life is transient, we do not dwell upon it, but it sits on the road ahead of us in the fog, and we know-not the mile marker that ends our journey. Can you imagine the horror that would lurk about us always, if we did not know that death is not the end, and that it is a transition, a move to the only true home, that God built for us.

God is no landlord, Yep, He has done us one better than even old Jim Walter could do. His homes are given with love, a supreme love indeed. Life is strikingly different now than for past generations, advances in nutrition, hygiene, and medicine, have worked to drastically lower child mortality. Children today and their parents do not have the specter of death hanging over them. Only a short time ago, when my parents were young, this was not so. My daddy's daddy and mama buried several babies.

My mama's parents lost a beautiful and loving young girl named Annie Ruth (1931-1933) as well as their bright and funny little boy, Jimmy (1944-1946) mama said her sweet mama, our beloved Granny almost lost her mind in grief. Each died suddenly without being ill. When Annie Ruth took suddenly ill and lost consciousness, mama was five years old, and had a friend spending the night with her, a girl her age. When it was obvious that Annie Ruth was terribly ill, Granny told mama to run get her mother, mama's grandmother Cass Townsend.

She lived not very far up the old road. It was dark, she had no light, and was so scared already because of how frantic Granny and Grandpa were, and then she heard footsteps behind her and that terrified her. Annie Ruth was dead, and mama's little friend had just run from the house to catch her and tell her. They walked crying, unable to even see the dirt road for tears in the darkness. She told her grandma Cass, that Annie Ruth was dead. She, walked back with them to be with Granny, but it was little comfort.

Uncle Bud, Dr. Bud Tyson came, but said there was no way of knowing what she had died from. When little Jimmy died in 1946, Mama was living at Fort Bragg, in Fayetteville, N.C., with Great-grandpa Silas Townsend because mama's then husband was stationed at Fort Bragg. Jimmy had come along late in their lives and he was a joy to them and everyone. His nickname for mama was, "Fats." She adored him. He was eating breakfast and fell over unconscious, Grandpa picked him up, and he died in Grandpa's arms.

Again, Uncle Bud came, and said Jimmy had died of a stroke. Granny played the banjo and grandpa played the fiddle. After Jimmy died in his arms he never picked up the fiddle again. None of us grandchildren ever heard him play. If you read correspondence between children and teens in the pre-Victorian era and up to the Edwardian era, you will find that they had an obsession with death. Young girls' diary entries reflected it as well. If they penned poems, verse, or prose, it often had a theme of not expecting to live to become an adult.

A custom then among the children, well daughters especially of more affluent families, was to have a book for any children guests in the home, to sign and write some brief words to the other, and most had cards for those to take with them too. If you read those childhood messages between those kids, you would also see a preoccupation with death. It seems as if it was expected, and most dared not omit these fears, for fear of divine retribution for their hubris.

Almost everything they wrote was hedged with lines much like these, "if God wills it, and lets me live," or "if I am granted life to see you again, I will be blessed and grateful," but if the Lord calls me home, before then, I pray you remember me with fondness, as I would you." Or, "if death doth sweep me away, I hope you will think now and then of the times we had together." Those words were penned by young children.

We can't imagine a young child writing such lines today, and we thank God for it. I hope this post is not too much of a bummer, but it comes to me to write things and those things will not be denied. I will try to end it on a pleasant note...give me a minute. Okay. let me tell you the Egg Story, a few will have heard me tell it before, but most have not. It's an old, old story, one you've probably heard before: Long ago, and far away, I was driving the truck I hauled loads of lightered stumps to Hercules in Brunswick, for daddy.

It was late at night, as I had hauled two loads that day, and although it was the middle of the night, I wanted breakfast when I got home before going to bed. It was before Judy and I married, so as I say, I had to shift for myself. I knew I had bacon, grits, bread for toast, everything I needed for a good breakfast, but no eggs. There were fewer stores open at night back then, so I would have to stop at Jay's Truck stop in Metter, on my way home.

It was a bit out of the way to go to Swainsboro, but it was the only place to get eggs that was open. The lady working that night had worked there for years, and we knew each other as acquaintances. Tired, I walked slowly into the store and back to the cooler, where there was bacon, margarine, but no eggs. I turned and spoke to her from the back of the store asking where the eggs were. She said they had none. I asked if they were out, and she said, no, they just did not sell them.

As the Brits say, I was "gobsmacked!" She assured me they had never sold eggs. At this point I was as tired and whiny as nine year old finding out we had no peanut butter. They had a little kitchen of sorts back there and sold breakfast biscuits, including biscuits with an egg. So I, as pitifully as I could, I lamented that I had my heart set on breakfast before falling exhaustedly into bed, and how I was desperate for eggs, hoping she would take pity on me, and sell me some from there.

It seemed God was smiling down on me when she leaned on the counter, and got close to me, looked left and right, up and down, and all around, like it was a dope deal, and whispered, "how many eggs do you want?" Desperate to not louse up the opportunity for eggs, I looked left and right, up and down, and all around, leaned forward and whispered, "four." She stood bolt upright and said loudly, "WE DON'T HAVE ANY!!"

We love y'all, and thank you. NUMBERS 6: 24-26 KJV

..... we boyz three, babee conway, lil merle, & me