WORDS FROM W.W. May 10, 2019
I’ve progressed. As a long gone Kentucky uncle would have said to me, “You did done good, son!”
Two days ago my feet touched three different countries in the same day. That’s “COUNTRIES”, mind you! Not counties! Put the “r” in there to turn me from a local yocal to an international traveler!
France, Luxembourg, and Germany with the same two feet! I wasn’t sure what language I should have been speaking, things were changing so fast…so I resorted to middle school dialogue, throwing in a few “Dudes!” and other hip phrases that made people keep their distance from me.
“That was crisp, dude!” I said to a white-haired gentleman, carrying his wife’s two suitcases and a backpack while smoking a cigar. He looked at me like I was trying to con him. Must have been from the East Coast, all suspicious and skeptical about life.
Three countries! I’ve come a long way, baby!
You see, until I was 18 years old and a high school graduate I had never been outside of three states (Kentucky, West Virginia, and Ohio) and my family had lived in all three. Do the math! That means 3 states visited…over 3 states lived in…that equates to…0% as being the percent of states I visited that I had not been a resident of!
As we used to say, I didn’t get out much!
It’s amazing how our “world”, or understanding of it, changes as our boundaries change. In southern Ohio, where our town laid out nicely beside the Ohio River, my “world” was uncomplicated and “Mayberry-ish”!
If my hair was about to land on the top of my ear Dad took men to see Mr. Morris at Morris’s Barber Shop. Back in those days a young guy’s hair touching his ears was a sign that he had jumped off the deep end from the safety of reason and was about to land in the chasm of radicalism. First…hair touching a kid’s ears and the next thing would probably be doing drugs and embracing the hippie movement, free love and then driving around in a VW wagon with a peace sign on the back window. In other words, a haircut seemed to make you more American and keep you grounded…so they told us!
Morris’s was right across the street from where my mom worked at the J.C. Penney’s. Penney’s was where I got outfitted…socks, tighty-whities, shoes, shirt, jeans. If Penney’s didn’t sell it I didn’t wear it. More accurately stated, if Penny’s didn’t sell it then it wasn’t essential to my existence. A young guy could always depend on Towncraft underwear and socks.
Our church, Ironton First Baptist Church, was a block and a half away. My youth group, Baptist Youth Fellowship (BYF), provided me with some of my closest friendships…and, as time would reveal, a few of my former girlfriends. Today, as we sail down the Moselle River in Germany, Carol and I are traveling with Dave and Robyn Hughes. Dave was a part of that BYF group, filled the role of Best Man for our wedding, and allowed me to conduct the wedding ceremony for his walk down the aisle.
There it was! My world could be described in those three simple places: a haircut for normalcy, Penney’s dress attire for uncomplicated reason, and our church for lifelong relationships.
47 years after I finally traveled, at the age of 18, into my fourth state (Tennessee), I journeyed into three different countries in less than 12 hours. My “world” has changed over the decades. I no longer think of Taco Bell as fine Mexican cuisine, or Maxwell House as a fine cup of coffee. My world is broader and more diversified, but the roots of my upbringing always cause me to long for what was home.
Words from WW Blog 