GOOD MORNING, FRIENDS

A REMEMBERAMBLE OCTOBER 31, 2025

Happy Halloween. Happy Friday. Happy birthday to we boyz three! How old are we boyz three? Deddee is aged 67 years...long, rough, hard years. The babee is aged 3, and lil Merle is 2 years of age. We thank you for the wonderful, and heartfelt, birthday wishes, for the prayers and kind gifts that God has blessed us with, through you. It has been a grand year for me, despite losses of loved ones, health problems, and financial disasters, end-to-end, and you may ask why I call it grand?

Because in spite of it all, we must remember that there is no "Heaven-on-earth," it is now and has been a fallen world. But we have persevered, we have hunkered down, and made the best of it, as God gives us to see to our best. I am not alone, in the battle, you are with me, and I am with you, together we will help each other. None shall see the end of sadness nor strife until God calls us home, but unto that day, let us hold hands, let us lift the other, let us "spell" each other when our feet falter, and our spark is all but extinguished.

Remember, if we find ourselves alone and in despair, that is our doing, and we can change that. We have been given the power by a loving God, over the enemy. I am once more reminded of the little story told of a man who asked his pastor to pray for him, as the "devil was on his back, on his back strong!" His pastor said, "of course I will pray for you, but why do you let the devil get on your back, when you have the power to keep him underfoot?" Too often we will ascribe suffering to satan, but those are words only, we do not believe our own words.

We, like a parrot, say the words, but they are meaningless. To give our words meaning and power, you must put God in them, like putting batteries in your flashlight so it will shine as it should. You may also, with your freewill, give satan power over your words. Don't do that!! It is all voluntary, satan may not draft you into his army, he must lie like a Vietnam era Military Recruiting Officer, and convince you to join. He must promise you lovely places, white sandy beaches, swaying palms, island paradises, populated with beautiful women and handsome men.

He makes no mention of fetid jungles and fighting a seemingly never-ending enemy. Okay, let me do a slight steering correction now. Hot boiled peanuts. Fresh-made cane syrup. Homemade persimmon bread. Newly dug sweet potatoes. Hog killin' brings pork bellies, cured ham, wonderful fresh pork sausage, souse, and a cornucopia of good things to eat, from rooter to tooter as we say. Of course the coolness brought work, and some hard labor on its coattails.

Pulling and stacking fodder, picking and stringing velvet beans, plowing and thrashing peanuts, and making peanut hay while the sun shined. Cane stripping and topping, and the juice boiled into a sweet nectar called "pyore ole cane surp." In those days, a syrup "biling," required a heap of heart pine, fat lightered old posts, split catfaces, even old busted lumber and fence rails, to feed the maw of many'a brick furnace beneath the old syrup "kittle." The pecans will soon fall, and sore backs will yield pies and other good things.

Oh lordy at the cotton to pick, and the corn to "break", tote and shell. Then, the hope was for a big crop of mast in the woods, such that the hogs could plunder and fatten on it. Mast? Ah, you know, the bullaces, scuppernongs, huckleberries, acorns, pecans, hickory nuts, Geechee limes, persimmons, and any and all fruits, nuts, and berries mama nature provided. Most of you know, but perhaps some do not know that until the early 1950s, livestock, folks' hogs and cattle wandered free, and were not fenced in.

They were fenced out. Fences then were built around rural homes, with yard gates, around crop fields, school houses, church yards and cemeteries, farmyards, etc.. Yessir, the years with good crops of mast were fat years, but the ones when drought denuded or robbed the trees, shrubs and vines of their produce, those were lean years, and long remembered indeed. Oh, did I mention it is our birthday? You know I did. Thanks for the wonders of this group of folks. You are a wonderful people, yes you are.

Look later in the day for two puppy-babees posing in their Halloween get-ups. Yes, we know we are blessed indeed.

..... NUMBERS 6: 24-26, KJV

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