I found out today that time travel is possible. It didn’t take Einstein to figure it out either. All it took was for me to bear witness to an event that was quite endearing and a complete blessing to my heart. The little church that my mother grew up in had it’s 150th Anniversary today. They have always called it “The Homecoming” and I attended many of them during the late 50’s and throughout the 60’s. My mother’s great-grand-fathers, from both sides of her parent’s families, had been the founders of the little church back in 1862. At different times during the first 40 years or so of the church both of them served as the preacher. I grew up hearing about many events that happened at the church. It was my great honor to read to those assembled today some of the memories of the church that my mother had written down. Mom has never liked to speak in public and asked me if I would read them for her. I was more than happy to do so.
Some of the memories included some funny things about church-going before air-conditioning, hardwood pews with no cushions, and tales of baptism’s in one or the other member’s “tank” (a small pond for the cows to you city folk) by lantern light, and life in general before things got crazy. No homecoming at Pleasant Grove Baptist Church is complete without a good old-fashioned “singing” or singin’ as we call them. Today was no different. About 50 years ago my mother, father, and two-sisters had a little gospel quartet and they sang for one of the homecomings. I guess I was too young then, but I showed them!
A gospel quartet came and sang today and the little church’s rafters were shaking and quaking. They were truly a good old-fashioned southern gospel group. I was surprised to learn that the bass singer graduated from the same high school that I did only he was 14 years earlier than me. They sang some great old songs like “The Old-Rugged Cross”, “This World Is Not My Home”, “Amazing Grace”, “It Is Well With My Soul”, “I’ll Fly Away”, and perhaps one of my parent’s favorites, “Victory In Jesus”. I sat there beside my parents and watched them grow young again. Young at heart at least. My mother reached over and took my father’s hand as they sang loudly the words to “Victory In Jesus”. Mom is 83 and Dad turns 90 in December. They have been married 64+ years. They both had tears in their eyes by the end of the song. I looked around the room, where only about 50 people sat - most of them in their 70’s or older ( it has been a long time since I was one of the youngest people in a room!), and I could see the pure joy that they felt singing those old songs. The quartet had come equipped with a P.A. system, electric piano, drums, and so forth. That little church may never be the same again! I know time travel is possible because there must have been 25 people there today that haven’t been able to hear for years and today they could hear loud and clear and their hearts were young again!
I realized after witnessing this blessing we called “The Homecoming” that it was just a small snapshot of what all Christians will partake of when we have our final homecoming. That is going to be glorious day indeed. The little church in the woods where so many memories are housed is a humble little church. The building itself is more functional than it is attractive. There’s no fancy alter, no gloriously lit chandelier, no TV cameras, no choir of 800 souls, nothing that bears the marked of a so-called “mega” church of today. But God was in that little church today. Jesus promised this when he said, “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them." - Matthew 18:20.
I am so very thankful that I was raised in a Christian home with parents who love Jesus and taught me about Jesus. In many ways, they still do. We must never forget that those who go ahead of us teach us lessons long after we become adults. My parents are teaching me now how to grow old and appreciate this life that is such a gift no matter how hard it may seem at times. If you are blessed to still have your parents in your life, then call them up and tell them thank you. Tell them how much you love them. Because one day you will live on without them, even if for only a little while, and you may sing the words to my Dad’s favorite old gospel song, “If I could hear my mother pray again. If I could hear her tender voice as then. So glad I’d be, would mean so much to me. If I could hear mother pray again.”
God Bless,
James R. Stout
About 10 years ago my daughter and I spent some time at my parent’s house visiting them and my sister and her husband. My parents live about 15 miles from our family property where I now live. One of my favorite things to do then and now is to drive around the country roads (all dirt or gravel) just to see what’s there. I’ve taken literally thousands of photos of interesting old buildings, houses, animals, scenery, and so forth over the years. Our visit at the time was no exception. The four of us bundled up in warm clothes and piled into my sister’s Ford Explorer for a drive out in the country. It would turn into a funny little trip that has now passed into family folklore.
We first drove out to the old farmhouse that was my grandparent’s home dating back to 1921. We stopped and I took photos of everyone in front of the house like I have been doing all my life it seems. It was much too cold to stay in the house without starting a fire and we didn’t want to stay that long so we moved on. Our driving around continued and we managed to see a few deer, many small animals such as rabbits, squirrels, and such and more than a few seasonal hawks perched on fence posts and power polls. They appeared to be watching us as much as we were watching them. By far the most abundant animal in “these here parts” are the cattle. There were and are cattle everywhere. Hey, it is Texas!
One of the fairly main county roads we drove on is about 2 miles north of the farmhouse. We had just turned left onto that road when I looked out into the pasture on our right and saw what I at first thought of as “The Goldie Locks Cows”. Why? Because there were three of them standing in formation. A papa, a mama, and a baby. The way they were standing caught my eye and I told my brother-in-law to stop so that I could get a photo. Well, I opened the car door and as soon as I lifted the camera up and was about to take the picture the three cows all raised their heads and turned them in unison to look right at me. SNAP! We all started laughing because it was just too cool that these cows thought enough of me to actually pose for a picture.
Well, the story could have ended there, but if you have read any of my BLOG posts before, then you know it doesn’t. When I got back home a couple of days later and sat down to go through all the photos I had taken (digital, don’t ya know) I got to the photo in question and when it came up on the computer screen I busted out laughing because of an unintended, yet very welcome, “special effect” had happened when I took that picture. All of the cows had glowing green eyes! Staring right at the camera! You can’t stage that kind of thing. Immediately I thought of the tales of aliens coming down and cow-napping (well, they weren’t goats . . .) cattle for whatever bizarre reasons aliens do such things. Therefore, I named the photo “The Alien Cows”. I sent an email to several members of the family and everyone had a good laugh.
Well, I tell this story because it reminds me of how every family has their own little tales of folklore such as “I remember when Uncle Dan blew tea out of his nose at Thanksgiving when Grandpa’s teeth fell into the mash potatoes” or “Do you remember the time Bobby picked up the snake that he thought was a twig?” Aren’t families great? Mine is. I sure hope your family is as special to you as my family is to me. Try to spend as much time with them as you can. You might get to see some alien cows too!
To those of you who have followed my BLOG you might have wondered where I’ve been for the past 3 weeks. Well, much has been going on in my life, but most of it has been typical everyday kinds of things that have just taken too much time from me to get another posting ready. However, I have started a couple of HUGE projects that I hope will be of interest to you when they are completed. First, I am working on a complete overhaul of my website. It will feature not only my music, but also my photography and it will be where my BLOG will be easier to access. The other major project that I am working on is what I am going to likely call “The Soundtrack of My Life”. That could change though.
I have been recording music for over 40 years now. In fact, since I was about 14 years old. Thankfully, you will never hear any of the really ancient stuff. Take my word on something - that’s a good thing! The point is I have been going through hours upon hours of recorded music on old reel-to-reel tapes and transferring a great deal of it to the computer for the “Soundtrack” project. I’ll explain as things go along what all this is about, but for this entry in my BLOG I want to talk about some things that have been happening while listening to these old tapes. Most of them have not been played in many many years. I certainly remember a lot of the recordings, but amazingly I have “discovered” some old recordings that I had forgotten about. Some of them I simply don’t remember doing at all. That’s kind of humbling.
What has happened though is hearing all of these recordings and listening through the typical things that you never hear when you hear a song on someone’s album (such as the starts and stops, background talking, joking around, noises, and in a few cases some pretty amazing exchanges between people) a curious thing has happened to me. I have quite literally been hit with a myriad of emotions while hearing these things. Things like just before starting a recording you can hear my ex-wife in the background asking how long I’ll be so that she can plan on when to have dinner. The exchange ends with an audible kiss and mutual “I love you” expressions. Hearing that strips away the hard years that were to come and I am reminded that I was indeed in love with her and she was in love with me. We were young, just staring out really, and all of life was still before us. It was before all the “stuff” that eventually crushed our love and our marriage. Hearing it makes me ask the inevitable question, “What the heck happened?” Well, of course I know the answer because the memory of all the bad stuff still lingers too. But it makes you wonder how you can let something that was good just die. No, I’m not hung up on my ex now. I have a good life now. But the “what if” game does play through your head and that’s a game that is hard to play.
Other things have hit me while listening to these old recordings. The dreams and goals and vibrancy of youth that seem to just ooze off the tapes. Everything seemed possible then. There’s some pretty funny stuff on those tapes too. Things that remind me that I’ve been kind of nutty all my life!
If all goes the way I plan, then you will have a chance to hear many of the songs recorded over a nearly 40 year period of time. The idea is to combine two forms of media for this project. I will be writing an auto-biography of sorts (where music in my life has been concerned) and the reader will be able to access a digital jukebox on the new website that will allow you to hear some of those songs when they were new and before the magic of a professional studio “cleaned them up”. There will be a lot demons exorcised in this project and that part is for my benefit. I’m hoping that to anyone interested in my life and my music their benefit will be to share it with me. Let me know what you think. I really would like to know.
Take care dear friends,
Randy
When you’re 17 life can be pretty amazing. It was for me. If I were to decide to write about the experiences I had in my 17th year it could turn out to be at least a full book and perhaps a 3 volume set. For now I’m going to tell about one particular event. It was in June of 1973. I was working at a movie theater and among my co-workers were my best buddy Lonny and my cousin Philip. The new feature that week was the final movie of the original 5 movie set of “Planet of the Apes”. This one was called “Battle For The Planet of the Apes”. As a promotional we ran all five ape movies starting at 10 a.m. The current movie was featured both at 6 and 10 p.m. The original movie was also featured twice. Once at 10 a.m. and again at 8 p.m. It was such a popular event that it was held over for 3 weeks. Back in those days it was rare for a picture to stay in the theater for more than a week. Oh it would come back around as a second feature (remember getting to see 2 movies for the price of 1?) sometime later. It would also spend some time in the drive-ins after it’s run at the indoor theaters like the one I worked at.
The second night we were showing these movies the manager came to Philip and said he needed something picked up from another theater across town. When I say across town you must understand that meant about 40 miles. Houston is a big town! My friend Lonny and I were just getting off for the day and had nothing else to do so we tagged along with Philip. It was one crazy cool cruising night. We took Philip’s car, a 1968 Chevy Camaro which was suped-up with loud exhaust, slicks on the back, and a faster than it should have been V-8 under the hood. It took about an hour to get across town and get the items we were after. Little did we know that the “items” were yet another promotional tool for the ape movies. What were they? Would you believe 3 very lifelike ape masks just like in the movie! Well, our fertile 17 year old minds immediately seized the day. As soon as we drove out of the parking lot of that other theater we stopped and dawned those ape masks for the ride back across town.
Now there’s a couple of things you might want to picture along with this. First, Philip was restricted from driving without his glasses. So, he found a way to get those glasses of his on the mask which made for a very intelligent looking ape. Second, no A/C in that car meant the windows were down. So, to keep the image going we slumped down so that just our heads were visible to other drivers. We had to drive through the center of downtown Houston and there was a red light every 10 feet or so. The reactions by people were quite funny. We were deadpanning the whole time acting as if it was the most natural thing in the world for 3 apes to be driving a 1968 Camaro through the streets of Houston. Some kids screamed with fright while others laughed. Some adults, too old for such nonsense (in their minds that is) simply ignored us while others pointed and shook their heads in wonder.
So the idea came up that perhaps we should stop by Lonny’s house and scare his little brother and sister. From what I can tell his brother has never gotten over it while his sister relates the trauma she endured in a stand-up comedy routine! Lonny’s mother was not amused however and I seriously wondered for years if she ever forgave me. Lonny tells me she did.
Finally, we get back to the theater and we walk in among the movie-goers wearing the masks and generally got a lot of laughs. I tell this story because it reminds me that sometimes we forget how to let our hair down (sorry about that) and take a light-hearted approach to life when perhaps being light-hearted is just what the heart needs. Philip lives in Alaska these days having been banned from Texas for aping around too much. Lonny lives in the Dallas area and is perhaps the first bald ape in history. As for me, I live in the country of East Texas and over the years have become as big as an ape. I tell Lonny that between the two of us we’re bald and fat. But that night in 1973 when the world was hearing about the fighting in Israel, some really sick men who had murdered 27 young boys in our hometown of Houston, and questions were flying about something called “Watergate” three 17 year-old boys were not to be deterred from the joy that everyone should get to experience in their youth.
