Flashback to sitting in Coach Haywood’s office at the old Belfry High School following my senior season.

As I shared previously, he told me that day he thought I could play college football.

He also made it clear he wasn’t talking about Alabama or Penn State.

Or Kentucky, for that matter.

I kind of already knew that.

But I also knew I wanted to keep playing the game.

You know. The game I started out hating.

Coach asked if I wanted him to send some of my game film to colleges.

Naturally, I said yes.

I don’t know how many schools he contacted or exactly where he sent the film. Looking back, I’m just thankful he did.

He didn’t have to.

Our crop of Belfry seniors had completed the season. Coach could have simply moved into his second year at BHS and concentrated on what he wanted to accomplish.

Coach Haywood wasn’t that kind of guy.

He cared about his players, even after they were no longer his players.

Letters started coming.

Some came from NCAA FCS schools, but most were from Division III and NAIA programs.

Eastern Kentucky and Morehead State showed some interest, which wasn’t surprising given Coach Haywood’s and Coach Roddy’s connections.

Then I got three letters from Dartmouth.

They wanted me to visit during spring football practice.

Mom was particularly thrilled that her son was being recruited by an Ivy League school.

I still chuckle when I think about it.

I somehow just couldn’t picture my hillbilly accent, sleeveless flannel shirts and worn-out blue jeans strolling around the Dartmouth campus in the middle of New Hampshire.

Eventually, schools like Eastern Kentucky and Morehead lost interest.

The knock on me was pretty simple.

Good speed. Would hit you. Good football mind.

Too short.

I was about 5’10”. I always told people I was 5’11”.

At Belfry, I’d lined up at just about everything from fullback to tight end on offense. On defense, the only place I hadn’t played was the secondary.

By my senior year, I’d settled in on the offensive and defensive lines.

You know, those all-guts, no-glory positions.

And I’ll say this: You show me a team with a bad offensive and defensive line, and I’ll show you a bad football team.

Coach sent more of my film to schools in the WVIAC — the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.

West Virginia may not immediately come to mind as a football hotbed, but look at the list of football people from or associated with the state and it’s pretty impressive.

Lou Holtz. Nick Saban. John McKay. Sam Huff. Randy Moss. Curt Warner.

And several others.

I had no idea when I signed with tiny Salem College that I’d eventually encounter three of those football legends.

Coach Tony Ierulli was recruiting for Salem and coached the linebackers there. He came to Belfry, talked with me and spoke with Coach Haywood.

He told me Salem’s program was on the upswing. They had a talented young head coach and a pretty good young quarterback.

That caught my attention.

The head coach was Terry Bowden.

My first thought was, I wonder if he’s related to Bobby Bowden?

Well…

Yes.

Yes, he was.

Terry was Bobby’s second son, just behind Tommy Bowden, who was a pretty good coach in his own right at Clemson.

At 29, Terry was the youngest head coach in college football.

My brother Mike took the biggest interest in my athletic life. He’d haul me around to baseball practice, football practice, whatever I needed.

He was also an advocate for me.

“Ben, you really ought to give Salem some consideration,” he’d say.

“The program is coming on. They won the conference last year, and that was only Bowden’s second season.”

So, in the spring of 1985, I visited Salem.

It was small.

I liked small.

Salem reminded me a lot of where I grew up in Pike County. Rural. Close-knit. Hardworking people. Church on Sunday.

The school was tiny. Some schools had dormitories larger than Salem’s entire enrollment.

Didn’t matter to me.

What mattered was that I had a chance to play football.

Getting there wasn’t exactly a Sunday drive.

Salem was about four and a half hours from Belfry. As we say in Kentucky, that was a purty fer piece.

It sat off I-79, a couple of hours north of Charleston and just south of Morgantown.

The summer before I left, we gathered all the college necessities.

A hot plate.

My radio/cassette boombox.

A 14-inch television.

Clothes.

School supplies.

And apparently, underwear that needed to be labeled.

God bless my dear mother. She actually asked, “Should I put your initials on your underwear tags?”

In her mind, the reasoning was sound.

I’d never done my own laundry.

She was concerned I’d lose track of things.

She knew her son.

With everything loaded up, we headed north.

I was 100% okay.

That was until everything was moved into my room on the fifth floor of Montgomery Hall.

We made our way back down to Dad’s car.

That’s when the faucet opened.

The tears flowed.

I’m still not sure who cried more — me or Mom.

Dad was ready to head back south.

Football players were the first to arrive on campus in August, about three weeks before everyone else.

Team physicals were scheduled for that afternoon, so I decided to take a walk around campus and try to get my mind off the fact that I wouldn’t taste one of Mom’s home-cooked meals until Christmas.

I wandered by the weight room.

Just wanted to check it out.

For the briefest moment, I almost hated football again.

There was one guy in there.

Tony Mitchell.

Big dude.

Nobody else.

Just Tony.

He was on the bench press.

As a lifter, after a while you can look at the bar and the plates and have a pretty good idea what’s happening.

Tony had four big plates and a 25-pound plate on each side.

455 pounds.

Four hundred and fifty-five pounds.

I thought, Is this guy actually maxing out without a spotter? How dangerous is that?

Nope.

He was repping it.

Once.

Twice.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Then the bar slammed down on the rack.

My thought immediately shifted to:

Dear Lord. What have I gotten myself into?

I walked out.

Didn’t say a word.

Eventually my roommate showed up.

Gordie Ratliff.

Ol’ Gordie was from my neck of the woods and had played for Coach Haywood at Prestonsburg.

Turns out Coach Haywood wasn’t just looking after his new kids at Belfry.

He hadn’t forgotten about the ones he’d left behind, either.

Not gonna lie, it was nice having somebody around with the same accent.

At a minimum, we could understand each other.

I think we were the only two kids in the whole school from Kentucky.

We settled into the process.

That night, Coach Bowden held a team meeting.

It was the first time I’d seen the entire team together.

Coach Bowden laid down the law.

Nervous was one of several emotions being experienced.

My size really hit home.

Everybody was big.

The linemen?

I don’t think I saw one under 6’2”.

Most were 6’4” or better.

Remember that young quarterback I mentioned earlier?

His name was Jimbo Fisher.

Yes.

That Jimbo Fisher.

The same Jimbo who would later become an offensive coordinator under Nick Saban at LSU, win a national championship as head coach at Florida State and eventually coach at Texas A&M.

Back then, he was just our quarterback.

And man, could he light it up.

Jimbo and Coach Bowden seemed to operate on the same frequency. Coach knew what he wanted his offense to do, and Jimbo made sure it happened.

Early in camp, I was getting slung around while practicing with the defensive linemen.

I was surviving.

Not great.

Not terrible.

Then something happened.

I’d call it a blessing for me.

It was a little more like bad luck for somebody else.

The placekicker we’d recruited injured himself.

I believe it was a hamstring.

We were less than two weeks from the season opener, and suddenly the team needed a kicker.

Coach Ierulli walked up to me.

“Trout, didn’t you kick for your high school team?”

“Yes sir!”

“We need a kicker in a bad way. Go down to the other field with the guys trying out and let’s see what you got.”

I was one of those “Super Toe” guys.

Straight-on kicker.

Special shoe.

I almost didn’t bring the shoe to college.

Boy, am I glad I did.

I won the job.

We opened the season at home against Kutztown State.

Jimbo was throwing touchdowns.

Robert “Shorty” Smith was running circles around their defense.

And I was kicking extra points.

Jimbo was also my holder.

Imagine that.

I had no idea then that I’d be sharing a sideline with a future national championship head coach.

The game was tight when our drive stalled at the Kutztown 27.

Field goal time.

I hit a 34-yarder.

We won 38-36.

We had some really good players on that team.

Orson Mobley would eventually play in three Super Bowls with the Denver Broncos.

Jeff Shaw had started for Michigan as a true freshman in the 1980 Rose Bowl and was later drafted by Cincinnati.

There were plenty of others.

The list is too long.

We won the conference in 1985 and eventually lost to Hillsdale in the NAIA playoffs.

Because Bowden’s offense was so well designed and Jimbo was so accurate, we scored a whole bunch of points that season.

I finished as our second-leading scorer and earned All-Conference Honorable Mention.

But the statistics weren’t the important part.

Kicking gave me a purpose.

The team needed me.

Then Coach Bowden left after the season to become the offensive coordinator at Akron.

I wasn’t about to give up on playing.

I made it my mission to work as hard as I could that offseason.

Weights.

Running.

Bicycling.

Swimming.

Anything I could do to get stronger, faster and quicker.

I needed it, because I sure as heck wasn’t getting any taller.

I didn’t want to be a kicker.

I wanted to play.

Dana “Corky” Griffith took over for Coach Bowden.

Gordie hung it up and didn’t return.

The only constant was Jimbo.

He stuck around one more year, setting all kinds of WVIAC and national passing records before leaving to join Terry Bowden as the quarterback coach at Samford.

Corky was crazy as the day was long.

Southern West Virginia born and bred.

He always told me I was too short because of “low coal.”

He understood where I came from because he came from the same kind of place.

He’d say, “Hell, Trout, the reason you’re so short is because everybody in Pike County had to mine coal, and the best ones were short because they could get more work done in that low coal and it became heredity for y’all.”

He was probably right.

I told Corky I wanted to play guard.

I figured I could survive there.

A guard had to pull, run and be quick.

Given my height, I figured that was probably my best shot.

The work paid off.

My sophomore year, I became a starting guard.

I was back in the real action.

And I was happy.

I would play offensive line for the rest of my time at Salem.

I can’t say Corky was the greatest coach ever.

But I respected him, just as I did all of my coaches.

One thing he did very well was assemble a good coaching staff.

Former NFL standout Lonnie Warwick handled the defense.

Bob Gobel coached the offensive line.

And there was this fiery young guy from WVU coaching the secondary.

His name was Rich Rodriguez.

Today, he’s the head coach at West Virginia University.

Back then, he was just Coach Rod.

And wowzer.

That man was — and I suppose still is — one of the most intense individuals I’ve ever encountered.

I used to think Coach Roddy could give you a good ripping back at Belfry.

Rich would chew you up, spit you out and then step on you.

I don’t mean that negatively.

That’s simply how he was wired.

All of my coaches were different.

And that’s probably one of the things I learned most from playing for them.

At Salem, we became incredibly close.

Didn’t matter where you came from.

Didn’t matter what you looked like.

Didn’t matter what accent you carried into the locker room.

The bonds formed inside a football locker room can be among the strongest you’ll ever find.

My college best friend and teammate was about as different from me as two people could possibly be.

Scott Panaccione was a 6’5” tackle from Howell, New Jersey.

He was Italian.

Very Italian.

And he had the temper to match.

How did a short hillbilly from Kentucky end up being best friends with somebody who looked like he could have played a lead role in The Sopranos?

I still don’t know.

But I do know that summer of 1987, Scott’s father died of cancer just before camp opened.

The team knew.

Scott was the anchor of our offensive line.

We weren’t sure whether he’d even show up.

He did.

Scott rolled into camp angry at the world.

And I understood.

Most people kept their distance.

I didn’t.

I don’t think I talked him off a ledge, but I helped him through a difficult time.

Nearly 40 years later, we still talk often.

We see each other every couple of years.

We’re both a little different now.

But we still tell the same stories.

And somehow, they never get old.

Rich Rod took over as head coach my senior year.

We didn’t have the talent Terry Bowden had brought in, but you knew Rich was going to be successful.

He couldn’t live with himself if he wasn’t.

Rich never got that opportunity at Salem.

And it wasn’t his fault.

Following the 1988 season, seemingly out of nowhere, the bomb dropped.

Salem’s leadership decided to end the football program.

I played on the school’s final team.

And in its final game.

Rich was irate.

I still feel for Cheryl Morgan to this day. She was the secretary in the football office when Rich got the news.

I can only imagine the temperature inside that office.

My four years of college football were different from my four years of high school football.

Not better.

Not worse.

Just different.

It was a little like changing jobs but staying in the same line of work.

Three head coaches in four years.

Three completely different personalities.

Three different philosophies.

I took something from every one of them.

And I took something from my teammates, too.

Coach Bowden used to say:

“You don’t win with X’s and O’s. You win with people, process and passion.”

The older I get, the more I understand that.

Surround yourself with good people.

That’s the people.

Dad used to tell me, “You’re only as good as the people you hang out with.”

He was right.

Process is simply how you go about things.

Your job.

Your family.

Your faith.

Your life.

Without some kind of order, chaos eventually wins.

And then there’s passion.

My Uncle Claude Varney, a successful businessman, always told me to find something I absolutely loved and try my best to make a living doing it.

People.

Process.

Passion.

Put all three together and you have a pretty good recipe for success.

Funny thing is, when I think back on those four years, I don’t remember the wins and losses nearly as much as I remember the people.

Coach Haywood sending my film out even though he didn’t have to.

Mom asking if she should sew my initials into my underwear.

Gordie showing up on the fifth floor of Montgomery Hall with a Kentucky accent I could actually understand.

Tony Mitchell casually throwing around 455 pounds and nearly convincing me I’d made a terrible life decision.

Jimbo Fisher standing beside me on the sideline and being my holder when I kicked.

Corky explaining why I was short because of low coal.

Rich Rod chewing us out until we questioned every decision we’d ever made.

And Scott Panaccione — that big Italian from New Jersey — becoming one of my best friends.

That’s what football gave me.

Not a trophy.

Not a championship ring.

Not a professional career.

Something better.

It gave a kid who once couldn’t stand the game a place to belong.

It gave me coaches who believed in me.

Teammates who became friends.

Friends who became family.

And memories that, nearly four decades later, still make me smile.

And if you’ve been keeping up with this little journey, you know I’ve had plenty of experiences on and around the field.

But I still haven’t told you about my best ones.

Those stories are coming.

Maybe next week.

We’ll see.

We’re gettin’ close to wrapping this thing up folks.

Full disclosure: For Part II, I had planned on moving on to my college football days. By the way, if you missed Part I, give it a read.

But I ain’t ready to leave Belfry just yet.

There’s some more meat on that bone.

So who knows how long this little series is going to stick around?

I penned “Man, I Hated Football” back in February.

It was a simple, brief and humorous piece about how one play in grade school football clumsily resulted in a touchdown and altered my outlook on the game.

What that story didn’t do was convey just how big and important our grade-school football league was.

It’s time I give it its proper due.

I reckon the official name was the Belfry Area Youth Football League, or something close to that. What I can tell you is that it was the football foundation for hundreds of young fellas who wanted to be part of something special.

At the time, I had no clue just how much that league meant to so many people.

Players. Cheerleaders. The schools. Entire families. And general area football fans.

They all came out to Vipperman Stadium on Tuesday and Thursday evenings to eat a hot dog and watch the youngins battle it out on the field.

Let me tell you who else it was important to.

The coaches.

I’d pit the organization of that league and the quality of coaching up against many high school programs I see taking the field today.

The six-team league was comprised of Bevins, Blackberry, Runyon, South Williamson, Turkey Creek and Varney Elementary Schools.

Me?

I played for the Varney Jets.

Over the years, the Jets had a list of legendary coaches. Men like Ireland and Jim Vaughn Smith, David and Jerry Varney, David Hurley and James “JV” Rowe.

The other schools had excellent coaching, too, with guys like Bill Blackburn, Ron May, Denny and Gene Phillips, Bruce May, Rick Robinette, Kenny Smith, Stirl Hatfield, Paul May and the list goes on.

Belfry High head coach Dick Roddy had his hands on the grade-school league and its coaches as well.

After all, he needed to make sure the same offense and defense he ran on Friday nights were being taught at the youth level.

He wanted to be confident that when we reached the next level and he called 26 Power or Double A-Dog, we didn’t think he was speaking some foreign language.

Coach Roddy would also encourage the grade-school coaches to attend college football coaching clinics to enhance their skills. Whether it was the University of Tennessee, Eastern Kentucky University or the University of Kentucky, he wanted the grade-school league to be as strong as it possibly could be.

Strong feeder programs made for a stronger high school program.

Game days were special at Varney.

We got to wear our game jerseys to school.

That was a big deal for a 10-year-old.

I never learned a lick on game days. All I could think about was the game ahead. The butterflies flying around in the pit of my stomach might as well have been F-16s in full-scale aerial combat.

Thursday nights were the best nights for a game.

The Belfry High School band would be on the field practicing its show for the following evening. We were a day closer to getting to see the Pirates.

Often, Coach Roddy could be seen hanging out by the fence beside the band room.

I’d catch him in the corner of my eye and then hope he saw something worthwhile in me. I guess most of us wanted to impress him.

It kind of had that big-time feel to it for us.

Game day started well before we took the field.

Prior to loading onto the bus to make our way to the high school field, we’d always have a team meeting in the eighth-grade classroom at Varney.

The coaches would throw a few Xs and Os up on the chalkboard, maybe make sure you knew which of the special teams you were on.

But looking back on it, I now realize those meetings were really a stage for some last-minute theatrics and inspirational speeches guaranteed to have us believing we could lick a copperhead right between its eyes.

When I say theatrics, I mean that.

I’ll never forget it.

We were set to take on Turkey Creek in the league championship game — 1978, I believe it was.

Coach Hurley was at the board sketching out kickoff coverage lanes or something along those lines. Who knows?

Then came a loud knock at the door.

The coaches all looked at one another with angry glares, as if to say, How dare someone interrupt our pregame meeting?

Coach David Varney strolls over to the door and opens it.

Everyone’s eyes are fixated on the interaction.

It was the local florist.

Yep.

The florist from just up the road with a special delivery.

Coach Varney turned around with the biggest bouquet of roses I’d ever seen in his arms.

The roses?

They were as black as coal.

A card was attached.

The room was so quiet you could hear a tick walking on a velvet couch.

He brings the flowers to the front of the classroom and sets them down on the desk.

Coach Hurley opens the card.

He reads:

“Varney Jets, your season dies tonight.”

Signed:

Turkey Creek Red Devils.

Uh-oh.

It’s on now.

Then it happens.

Coach JV Rowe loses his ever-loving mind.

He huffs and puffs his way to the front of the classroom and, with one single violent blow, sends the flowers, vase and all flying through the air.

Black rose petals litter the floor.

He then goes into a tirade the likes of which we’d never heard before.

I swear, the man could have been a big time ‘rassler’.

By this time, we’re mad.

More than that, we’re ready.

Personally, I was so fired up I could have chewed up sheet metal and spit out a bicycle.

We won 20-8.

I don’t know if it was because we were well-coached or because JV Rowe flipped his lid.

I suspect it was somewhere in the middle.

For at least the next two years, ol’ gullible me believed the Turkey Creek team had really sent those flowers.

I also experienced one of the most embarrassing moments of my life playing grade-school ball.

My eighth-grade year, we were playing South Williamson, which was coached by Bill Blackburn at the time.

Now, I had been lucky.

I’d really never been hurt playing the game. In fact, I never suffered anything major until my junior year in college, when I broke my ankle.

But in that South Williamson game, I was blocking and got the back of my legs rolled up on, making my body fold in a way the good Lord never intended for it to bend.

My lower back was in major pain.

I was scared.

I was conscious and well aware of my surroundings. I could move all my extremities.

I was just mainly scared.

The coaches came out and had me lie there until I was fully checked out.

By this time, I was ready to get up.

And then I heard it.

A woman’s voice.

Now, as I’ve documented in previous Front Porch stories, in a community like ours, everybody knows everybody.

Bill Blackburn wasn’t only South Williamson’s coach. He was also a CPA and operated his own business in Williamson. Same town as Dad’s dry cleaners.

He and Dad were pretty good friends. He knew Mom as well.

Now, back to that woman’s voice.

As I lay there on the ground, the crowd was mostly quiet. For all they knew, I could be seriously injured.

Basically, any voice was going to carry.

That woman’s voice? Well, it originated from deep in the soul of my mother.

A mother, mind you, that at this point I’d never, ever heard say a foul word in all my life.

“Bill Blackburn, you son-of-a-______, you’re trying to hurt my baby!”

Oh my.

She didn’t.

Well, yes.

Yes, she did.

I wanted to lay there until the stands emptied so I could sneak out through a hole in the fence.

Mamas love their babies, I reckon.

The grade-school league was fun, no matter how you sliced it.

I’m thankful for the leadership we had and for the coaches realizing we needed it — especially if we planned on playing for the Big Red.

Before I take you forward to the next chapter in this so-called football life, just one more note about playing at Varney and at Belfry High.

I haven’t said much about my teammates, our cheerleaders, the band and the host of others who shepherded us through those days.

There were certainly some characters among them all.

Life-lasting friendships with a game as the common denominator tying us together.

Sometimes I think it sure would have been cool to have social media back in those days.

I think about all the pictures and stories that could have been readily shared.

And then I pause.

No.

Nope.

I’m glad we didn’t.

Our Sony Walkmans and boom boxes were about as tech-savvy as we needed to be.

While it might be fun to relive a video of us dancing under the red light, I’m not so sure a Coach Roddy halftime speech needs to be out there for public consumption.

Actually, I think the lack of it strengthens the bonds for those of us who lived it.

Some things are better when they belong only to the people who were there.

Join me on the porch next week for Part III in this series.

Lord, I might just have a book by the time I get through all these tales from the gridiron.

All these years later, it still reaches out and smacks me in the face every August.

I know it’s coming, but I’m never prepared for it.

I walk outside. Morning dew is thicker than maple syrup and sparkles like diamonds in the grass as the sun comes up.

It’s already 78 degrees and it’ll top out somewhere in the 90s before sundown.

The humidity might as well be cheese.

I take a deep breath, my senses combine with the elements, and the message is delivered.

Football!

When I look back, I’ve spent a rather astonishing percentage of my life on and around football fields.

From my grade school days through my son’s high school career, I’d say about thirty years, give or take.

That’s quite a bit of time for someone who once wrote a story about how much he hated football.

If you get time, you might want to go back and read “Man, I Hated Football.”

Heck, I haven’t even told you the half of it.

I can’t mention the word football without mentioning the word Belfry.

In my heart and soul, they’ll always be synonymous.

I played four years at Belfry. But there was much more to it than strapping on a helmet.

Belfry is one of those places where football was, and still is, part of the community’s DNA.

There’s just something emotionally powerful about a little community tucked away in Appalachian coal country collectively deciding:

“Yep. This is important.”

And then everybody — and I mean everybody — lives it.

I’m not saying this loosely, folks. The entire community’s heartbeat was governed by the Friday night scoreboard.

I was still in elementary school when I began to realize just how special Belfry football was.

We’d play our grade school league games on Tuesday or Thursday evenings, but we couldn’t wait to watch the Pirates on Friday night.

In the late ’70s, Belfry was good.

Really good.

I think that’s when I discovered some of my first real, living-and-breathing heroes.

I knew the legendary Belfry names: Ireland Smith, Rick Kestner, James Ramey and Coach Albert “Bearmeat” Vipperman.

I never got to see them play.

But in ’78, ’79 and ’80, I did get to watch the Pirates.

And I wasn’t above pretending to be one of them when tossing the football around in the backyard.

“Curtis Childress breaks through the line and into the end zone!”

“Benny Allen with a crushing tackle!”

“Greg Varney is just running anywhere he wants to tonight!”

“Jimmy Bevins is gonna go all the way!”

It was then I knew I’d be wearing the red and white.

Coach Roddy

Coach Dick Roddy was a stern man.

A U.S. Navy veteran and quite a good football player himself, he was the kind of guy who commanded instant respect when he walked through the door.

When I walked through the doors of Belfry High School in 1981, honestly?

He scared the bejeezers out of me.

I think it was because I cared.

I cared a lot.

Often to a fault.

I wanted to be good. And I couldn’t stand the thought of disappointing him.

Sometimes I envied the other kids on the team who didn’t seem to give a flip about practice or what the score was on Friday night.

I just wasn’t cut from that mold.

I knew Coach Roddy recognized that, and I think he appreciated it in me.

Coach Roddy had led Belfry to the state championship game in 1979, and that really ramped up the community’s expectations.

During my years, we never lived up to them.

And that’s OK.

Because under Coach Roddy, I learned so much more than a scoreboard could ever teach me.

I learned there would be good times and bad times.

Peaks and valleys.

Same goes with life.

Coach Roddy was always on point.

He had a sign hanging in his office that I would look at every time I was in there.

It read Kwitchyerbellyakin.

Obviously gibberish for “Quit your belly aching.”

His way of saying stop complaining. No whining. No need to make a fuss.

Get over it and move on.

I need to revisit that sign as I age.

I do too much belly aching these days.

But that’s another story for another time.

Coach was big on focus.

He wasn’t a “what-iffer” or a dreamer.

Very black and white.

Stick to the plan.

I’ll never forget one day in practice when one of our outside linebackers, ol’ Juddy Johnson, asked a question.

“Coach, what if that running back—”

And that’s all he got out.

Whew, boy.

We all knew what was coming.

I’ll preface this by saying Coach Roddy could rip ya when you needed it.

Or when he just thought you needed it.

It went something like this:

“What if? What do you mean what if? What if a bolt of lightning came down from the sky and what if it struck that sycamore tree way up there? And what if that tree exploded? And what if the force from the explosion made the limbs fly everywhere? And what if one of those limbs shot all the way across this field and went straight up your bleeeeeep? What if?”

Like I said, Coach Roddy wasn’t a what-iffer.

I got my share of rippings, too.

My junior year, I was calling our defense in the huddle when Pikeville called a timeout. They were driving and we were trying to prevent a score.

As defensive captain, I trotted over to the sideline to hear what Coach had to say.

He had an in-game way of letting you know what was on his mind without the crowd, the other team — or anybody else — knowing he was upset.

He’d pull you in tight, put an arm around your waist and face away from the grandstand.

To anyone watching, we could have been sharing dad jokes.

Of course, those weren’t a thing back then.

What folks didn’t see was that hand around your waist had a firm clasp on the little bit of fat just above the hip pads.

And the more he wanted to get his point across, the harder he’d pinch.

I didn’t belly ache about it.

He told me what needed to happen.

No what-ifs.

Stay focused.

Do your assignment.

I loved Coach Roddy.

In many ways, he was a father figure to me.

Like Dad’s, his voice still talks to me sometimes, especially when the sailing ain’t going so smoothly.

I think about Coach Roddy often.

He was a good coach and a fine human being. One whom I respected not because he commanded it, but because he earned it.

We had talent on those teams.

We just weren’t winning much.

And as often happens in sports, voices got louder as expectations weren’t being met.

Coach Roddy continued teaching at Belfry after stepping away from coaching.

He passed away following a short battle with leukemia in 1991.

Enter Coach Philip Haywood.

This was a huge deal to me because I was about to enter my senior season playing for a new head coach.

I felt like a lame duck.

I had so many questions entering 1984.

I was scared again, but for different reasons.

Coach Haywood was in his thirties when he came to Belfry from rival Prestonsburg.

I had no idea when I first met him in a team meeting that summer how much I would grow to love this man.

Being a little younger, Coach Haywood fostered a more relaxed environment.

Like Coach Roddy, he was intensely focused, just in a slightly different manner.

He firmly believed that focus should be only the things you can control. If you can’t control it, then don’t worry about it.

Perhaps a Marcus Aurelius of football kind of guy.

Where Coach Roddy was rigid and to the point, Coach Haywood was philosophical and open to options.

Coach Haywood wanted us to enjoy not just playing football, but living life.

He wanted us to have fun.

Above all, Coach Haywood was a Christ-centered man.

One of the finest Christians I’ve ever known.

He didn’t force that upon us as players.

He just walked the walk.

That’s all he had to do.

And he was a darn good football coach.

We had about three weeks to learn a whole new offense and defense under Coach Haywood.

It took us a while to get our ducks in a row, but we eventually got close and had a pretty decent season.

We finished 7-4.

That start was rough, though.

Our second game saw us catch a shellacking, 42-20, at Tates Creek.

That was followed by the single hardest football practice of my life.

Ever.

It was one of those come-to-Jesus practices where you’d almost give up the ghost just so it would all be over.

You know the kind.

Spot the ball on the one and it’s first down and 99 to go.

Water breaks?

Maybe.

We survived.

And we got better.

The highlight of the season came at rival Pikeville.

It was the fifth game of the season.

Pikeville was ranked No. 1 in the state and, get this, their defense had not given up a point through five games.

We showed up.

We won 20-0.

Coach Haywood couldn’t have been happier.

What do you do when you win big games?

You dance, of course.

Where do you dance?

Under the red light, of course.

Seriously.

We made the trip back to Belfry, drove right past the school and down to the first of only three red lights on the Kentucky side of the Tug River.

We got out, assembled under the red light and danced.

I’ll never forget it.

Music blaring.

Me laying under a red light doing “the roach.” - IYKYK.

It was plain to see Coach Haywood was going to do something special at Belfry.

He took the Pirates to the state championship game the following two seasons.

Patience was one of Coach Haywood’s greatest attributes.

It took the Belfry faithful a while to learn that.

The Pirates might lose a game or two early, but all Coach Haywood wanted was to “get a little better every week.”

Under Haywood, by the end of each season, things typically fell into place and Big Red would be rolling.

Coach cared deeply about his players, too.

I mentioned earlier that I felt like a lame duck, not knowing what having a new coach for my senior season would bring.

For all I knew, Coach was going to focus on his younger kids to see what he had to work with in the following seasons.

He didn’t.

He was fair to the senior class and fair to the upcoming talent.

Soon after our season ended, I got pulled out of class because Coach Haywood wanted to see me in his office.

He said, “Ben, you’re a pretty good football player, and I think you can play college ball.”

He also said, “Now, I don’t mean Ohio State or Alabama.”

He was talking small-college football.

I was indeed just a pretty good football player.

But by this time, I never wanted the game to end.

So he shipped my game film off to a variety of small programs.

Things fell into place.

I left Belfry and went on to play four years of college ball.

I’ll share more about that experience down the road.

Back to Belfry

My best times with Coach Haywood didn’t come during my senior season.

They came when I returned to Belfry in 1989 to begin teaching and coaching.

That was the only way I was still going to get my football fix.

What a staff we had.

Steve Mickey. Paul May. Royce Mayo. John DeRossett. Duane Curry. James “JV” Rowe.

Later came Todd Cassell and Anthony Tackett.

As a staff, we worked hard.

And we had a heck of a lot of fun doing it.

I grew much closer to Coach Haywood during those days.

Our conversations often steered away from football into deeper discussions about life, family and faith in God.

Upon my return to Belfry, I was attending Belfry Methodist Church — the same church Dad preached at way back in the day.

Coach Haywood was the choir director.

And he recruited me to be part of that team, too.

Coach led that choir with as much passion as he did his teams on Friday nights.

He also led me to Christ in the summer of 1992.

I spent eight years teaching and coaching with Coach Haywood at Belfry.

Absolutely some of the best days of my life.

Coach Haywood continued leading his Pirates and his choir until his untimely death following a car accident in January 2025.

By the time his coaching career ended, he had become the winningest coach in Kentucky high school football history, finishing with 491 wins and 162 losses. His Belfry teams won eight state championships in 14 appearances.

But those numbers don’t tell the story.

Not really.

What made Philip Haywood special was the way he lived.

Faith. Family. Football.

In that order.

He taught patience.

He taught us to focus on what we could control.

He taught us to get a little better every week.

And he taught me a whole lot about what it means to be a man of faith.

For sure, this time of year brings back so many memories of Belfry that go far beyond the coaches.

I played alongside some great athletes and some even bigger personalities.

Football is an emotional game.

There’s blood, sweat, smiles and tears in every season.

Outside of serving in our military, I dare say there’s little that can compare to the bonds developed on a football field, in a locker room or on a three-hour bus ride to do battle.

And that’s probably the thing I remember most.

Not the scores.

Not the records.

The people.

The coaches who pushed me.

The teammates who stood beside me.

The town that made Friday night feel like the most important night of the week.

Football may have been the game we played.

But Belfry was where I learned that the game was never really about the game.

And I guess that’s why, all these years later, when that August air hits me just right…

I still smile.

Because I finally understand.

Maybe I didn’t hate football after all.

Come back next week for Part II of my Football reflections.

Here in Northeast Tennessee, the kids headed back to the scholarly grind this week.

I don’t know what going back to school looks like these days, but I can close my eyes right now and relive those first days at Varney Elementary as vividly as if they happened yesterday.

I can see them.

Heck, I can even smell them.

For me, school didn’t begin on the first day. It started about two weeks beforehand.

That’s when the shopping began.

Our annual expedition usually meant a trip to Magic-Mart or Maloney’s. Those stores had a little bit of everything… and none of it cost very much.

First came the supplies.

A three-ring notebook.

You remember those things? Made out of indestructible heavy-duty compressed cardboard.

And those three metal rings were nearly impossible to pull apart with your fingers, but somehow they could slam shut at any given moment with enough force to draw blood.

If you were one of the fortunate kids, though, you walked in carrying the Cadillac of school supplies.

A Trapper Keeper.

What did it keep?

The Trapper folders, of course.

One for every subject.

There were No. 2 pencils.

A ruler.

Elmer’s Glue.

Wide-ruled notebook paper.

But the crown jewel…

That glorious 64-count box of Crayola crayons with the built-in sharpener on the back.

If you had one of those, you were royalty.

I mean, you never knew when life might suddenly require Burnt Sienna, Goldenrod or Cornflower.

The colors like White, Flesh and Carnation Pink never seemed to get much use. They usually stood there at year’s end looking factory new. I suppose coloring white paper with white crayons was always a bit of an uphill battle.

I wanted that big box every single year.

Never got it.

Then came the clothes.

Not a whole wardrobe.

Just enough to convince people we hadn’t completely outgrown everything over the summer.

A new pair of jeans. Husky brand for me - I’ve written about them before.

A couple of shirts.

Every other year, if fortune smiled upon us, a new pair of sneakers.

Those shirts, though…

Every single one of them seemed to be made from 100 percent polyester.

Mom must’ve thought it was a commandment.

Those things would itch so badly you’d swear Satan himself knitted them out of sandpaper.

Then finally…

The first day arrived.

I never dreaded it.

In fact, I couldn’t wait.

Who would my teacher be?

Who’d be in my class?

Did we get anything new on the playground?

Now that first morning followed the exact same script every single year.

Dad was the one who woke us up. The only day of the year he took on that duty.

Not because Mom couldn’t.

Because he had a job to do.

He had to sing…

School days, school days,
Dear old Golden Rule days.
'Reading and 'riting and 'rithmetic,
Taught to the tune of the hick'ry stick.

Every.

Single.

Year.

Mom would fix breakfast, and if I hurried, I could catch the last few minutes of Captain Kangaroo before heading out the door.

Then it was down the holler to wait on the school bus.

Kids laughing.

Talking.

Picking at one another.

Just being kids.

Once aboard, we’d slide into those cracked vinyl seats and the noise only got louder.

No phones.

No tablets.

No earbuds.

Just conversation.

There were no assigned seats either.

Everything sorted itself out naturally.

The older kids drifted to the back.

The chatterboxes filled the middle.

And the little ones, still trying to figure out what they’d gotten themselves into, gathered near the front.

Our driver was Chuckles.

That wasn’t his real name, but it’s the only one I ever knew.

He never had to yell much.

All it took was one look in that surfboard-sized mirror hanging over the windshield, and whatever foolishness was taking place usually came to a screeching halt.

Then we’d pull into the school.

The doors would swing open and that unmistakable smell would hit us.

Freshly waxed floors.

Fresh paint.

A building that somehow smelled clean, hopeful and full of possibility all at once.

Friends reunited after two long months.

Summer stories flying in every direction.

The boys pretending not to notice the girls.

The girls pretending not to notice the boys.

Nobody was fooling anybody.

The classroom looked perfect.

The chalkboard was spotless.

It wouldn’t look that clean again until the following August.

Above it hung that giant pull-down map of the United States.

I think teachers only lowered it once or twice a year because it had a habit of rolling itself back up whenever it pleased. It was basically the classroom’s version of a rattlesnake.

The hand-crank pencil sharpener waited patiently on the wall.

The teacher explained the rules.

Passed out the paperwork.

And if we were especially lucky…

Those papers had just come off the mimeograph machine - still damp.

Covered in that deep purple ink.

Before reading a single word, we’d all hold that page up to our noses and breathe in.

I have no earthly idea what was in that ink.

Whatever it was, they’ve never duplicated it.

(Pun absolutely intended.)

Then came that first squeak of chalk across the blackboard.

Just like that…

Another school year had officially begun.

No computers.

No smartphones.

No notifications.

Just a teacher.

A room full of kids.

And the quiet belief that learning something new might just make tomorrow a little better than today.

We weren’t trying to get followers.

We were building friendships.

Many of those friendships are still around all these years later.

Funny how a freshly waxed hallway, a box of crayons and the smell of mimeograph ink can carry a fellow back more than fifty years in the blink of an eye.

Those really were simpler days.

And every August…

I find myself missing them just a little bit more.

Church House Holler got a lot smaller in August of ’73.

Not because folks were moving away from the coalfields to the factories.

Nope. It was because ol’ Ben got his first bicycle, turning what had been a 10-minute walk into what seemed like mere seconds.

I’ll never forget it. It was my birthday—August 1.

Typically, birthdays weren’t that big of a deal around our house. No elaborate parties, certainly nothing like the celebrations you see in some homes today.

There might be a cake. If there was, Mom made it. She made the icing, too.

She had something akin to a caulk gun that she’d load up with icing and decorate the cake to the best of her ability.

If there were gifts, they were usually something needed for the upcoming school year.

That sixth birthday, though, was different.

I suspect it was because I was getting the bike.

We had a small cookout with family and neighbors.

Dad had me turn my back to him and cover my eyes with my hands. Under normal circumstances back then, when Dad told me to turn around, I immediately became a basket case because it usually meant I was getting the belt for some type of misdeed.

But I knew this time was different.

I’d been asking for a bicycle for what seemed like forever.

I didn’t know how to ride one.

Didn’t matter.

I wanted one.

I’d first laid eyes on it at Sears in downtown Williamson, where my Uncle Opie worked. After that, it was all I could think about.

Finally, I might fit in with my brother Tim, Marty Taylor, Troy Rutherford and the rest of the gang.

As everyone gathered around sang “Happy Birthday,” Dad wheeled it out.

“Turn around, Benny,” he said.

And there it was.

The Sears Purple Spyder Muscle Bicycle.

Banana seat.

Chain guard.

Front and rear reflectors.

Chrome fenders.

Chrome handlebars.

To this day I’m still not sure why it was called a muscle bike.

Of course, riding “up the holler” required a fair amount of muscle. More often than not, you’d wind up pushing it before you reached the head.

The purple metal-flake paint sparkled in the sunshine. You practically needed sunglasses to look at it.

Man, it was beautiful.

I think Dad was as happy as I was.

He was smiling from ear to ear.

I’d like to tell you I hopped on those two wheels like a fish takes to water.

Hardly.

But I was determined.

So there we were… me all sugared up on birthday cake icing and pedaling like a madman.

Dad had a firm grip on the bar behind the banana seat, holding me steady.

Keeping me in check.

Assuring me I could do it.

Then Dad let go.

Pedal. Come on. Hold it. Balance. Pedal. Pedal.

Abort! Abort!

Plunk.

Dad came running to pick me up, dust me off and send me on my way again.

“Come on, Benny. You can do it.”

The next time he let go a little sooner, and I went a little farther.

By the end of the day I was getting the hang of it.

Dad watched the whole time.

“You just about got it down, Benny,” he said. “You’ll be ridin’ that bike all over the place before you know it.”

Of course came all the guidance every youngster expected.

Be careful.

Look both ways.

Don’t go too fast.

After a couple of days of mastering my balance in the yard and driveway, I decided it was time.

Time to ride down to the Aunts’ house—you know, the Old Home Place.

I reckon it was about 300 or 350 yards.

And every inch of it was downhill.

Now, it’s important that I tell you something.

In all of Dad’s advice and coaching, there was one thing he forgot to mention.

How to stop.

I had no clue you could slam backward on the pedals and come to a screeching halt.

Coaster brake. That’s what it was called.

So I had to think this through.

I knew I was headed downhill.

I knew I was going to be flying.

The field around the Aunts’ house was wide open.

Once I got to the bottom, I’d just ride in circles until the bike came to a natural stop.

Simple enough.

Did I mention that field was wide open?

Well… almost.

There was one lone telephone pole standing behind the canning house.

No problem.

One telephone pole.

An entire field.

Surely I could avoid it.

Ready. Set. Go.

Pedal. Pedal. Steer. Coast.

Back on the pedals.

Faster. Faster.

Man, I was flying.

Then that telephone pole must’ve switched on some kind of tractor beam.

It kept getting bigger.

No worries.

I’d just turn.

Except… I didn’t.

My head was screaming, “Turn!”

My arms apparently weren’t listening.

The telephone pole grew larger.

Then larger still.

All that empty field.

How could this possibly be happening?

BAM!

Babe Ruth never made more solid contact.

The bicycle stopped instantly.

I didn’t.

Forward, then upward right over those beautiful chrome handlebars.

Head and shoulders into the telephone pole.

Then flat on my back.

I stood up.

Dusted myself off.

My first thought?

Man… I hope nobody saw that.

My second thought?

I really need to learn how to use that coaster brake.

Then I looked down.

The front chrome fender—once so shiny and beautiful—was bent.

My heart sank.

I’d owned my dream bicycle for two days, and now I’d scarred it.

“Dad… You ain’t gonna believe this.”

After hearing the afternoon’s adventure, he simply said,

“Well… let’s go see about that fender.”

And he did.

He straightened it until it looked as good as new.

Then we moved on to Lesson Number Two.

The coaster brake.

I learned.

And from then on, there were countless adventures.

Long rides up to the back alley in Belfry.

Trips along the railroad tracks to Varney Grade School.

The only part I didn’t enjoy was crossing the train trestle.

We’d have to get off and push our bikes across.

To my young eyes, the gaps between those railroad ties looked as wide as the Grand Canyon.

Of course, my brother made it even worse.

“If your foot gets stuck in there and a train comes…”

“…there ain’t nothin’ we can do.”

Thanks, Tim.

Still, it was worth every step because reaching the school meant playground time.

Eventually I got brave enough to screech the tires, pop wheelies and even ride with no hands.

Our homemade ramps and dreams of becoming the next Evel Knievel rarely ended well.

But every ride was worth it.

I didn’t know it then, but I realize now that Dad teaching me to ride that bike was a life lesson in and of its own.

It wasn’t just about balancing on two wheels.

It was symbolic of fatherhood.

Dad giving me that Purple Spyder on August 1, 1973, was a gift.

Knowing he is running behind me was an even bigger one.

Holding me steady.

Keeping me in check.

Encouraging me.

Believing I could do it before I believed it myself.

Then Dad let go.

Dad let go for good on August 2, 1992, the day after my 25th birthday.

I find myself standing in his shoes these days.

I pray I’m half the father to my 21-year-old son that he was to me.

Because that’s what fathers do.

We hold on tight.

We run alongside.

We steady the handlebars.

We cheer every little victory.

We dust them off after they crash into life’s telephone poles.

We hope our values stick.

We pray they’ll find happiness.

Because we know something our children don’t.

Someday…

we let go.

Ol’ Bill Shakespeare penned some mighty memorable words back in the late 1500s and early 1600s.

Many say he’s the greatest writer the English language has ever known.

I’ll just have to take the experts’ word for that. Truth is, I never read much Shakespeare outside of Macbeth.

You know… “Double, double toil and trouble…” and something, something bubble.

That happened when those witches were cooking up a potion of sorts, I reckon.

The only reason I read Macbeth was because it was mandatory in Mrs. Scott’s 11th-grade English Literature class.

But something a little more recent by another fella named Bill had me reading—and even understanding—some Shakespeare all over again.

This Bill, whose real name is William Lee Apostol, is better known by his stage name, Billy Strings.

The dude is a poet in his own right, and one whale of a musician.

I guess you could call him a Bluegrass artist, and you wouldn’t be wrong.

Then again, he’s never been one to stay inside the lines.

Now, before I get to the meat and potatoes of this Front Porch entry, I ought to explain how in the world I wound up writing about these Bills.

As is often the case with memorable stories, this one starts with my wife, Valerie.

I walked out onto the back deck one Saturday morning, coffee cup in hand, and found Valerie already settled deep into one of those Adirondack chairs alongside Cash, our black Flat-Coated Retriever.

She had her phone in her hand but didn’t say much.

Then, out of nowhere, she proclaimed, “Carolina Wren!”

I’m thinking to myself, Who in the heck is Carolina Wren?

She must’ve seen the puzzled look on my face.

“A Carolina Wren. That bird was a Carolina Wren,” she explained.

I nodded knowingly and replied with something profound like, “Uh… okay.”

“Chickadee!”

Now I’m thinking she’s come up with a new term of endearment for me.

Nope.

Another bird.

“Mockingbird. American Goldfinch. Tufted Titmouse.”

Then it hit me.

My lovely wife had entered that stage of life.

You know the one. Kind of like those Progressive Insurance commercials warning us not to become our parents.

She had downloaded an app that identifies bird songs and instantly tells you what feathered friend is doing the singing.

Now… back to the Bills.

Valerie’s bird app reminded me of my favorite Billy Strings song of all time. It’s called Gild the Lily.

Truth be told, the chorus was about all I’d ever retained from it. I hadn’t really listened to the song in a year or so.

And it might sound a bit absurd
I’d sing along with the birds
I’d sing along if I only knew the words
I’d sing along with the birds, if I only knew the words

I knew the lyrics carried a deeper meaning, but I couldn’t have told you what it was.

The same went for the title.

I introduced Valerie to Gild the Lily as the perfect companion song for her newfound birding hobby.

So we listened to Gild the Lily a few times, and like I did, she loved it.

While there’s still plenty of fiddle, banjo and some mighty fine guitar pickin’, I wouldn’t exactly call it traditional Bluegrass.

Maybe… Funkygrass, Mellowgrass, if those are even a thing.

Honestly, it sounds like Billy Strings, Blind Melon and the Grateful Dead got together for a jam session, tossed everything into a blender, and somehow this incredible song came pouring out.

Valerie, she’s the inquisitive type.

She’s an accountant by trade, but I honestly think she’d have made one heck of a lawyer—or maybe even a detective.

She likes finding out the who’s, what’s and why’s of things.

Needless to say, she did a deep dive into Gild the Lily.

Enter the other Bill… Shakespeare.

In King John, Act IV, Scene 2, he wrote:

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.

Basically, he’s saying you can’t improve something that is already perfect.

That prompted me to do a little deep dive of my own.

This time I paid much more attention to the lyrics instead of simply humming along with the chorus.

What a beautiful and insightful song.

Throughout it, Billy Strings uses Shakespeare’s words as a metaphor for overthinking and overcomplicating life, reminding us that authentic, actually letting us know imperfection often holds the greatest beauty.

It reminded me so much of Dad. And yes, his name was also Bill - you can’t make that up.

The things he would say.

The way he looked at the world.

Lessons that still stick with me today.

“Benny, don’t wish your life away.”

“Don’t worry about what you cannot change.”

“Appreciate your mistakes and learn from them.”

“I don’t care what you’ll encounter in life. Things will work out for you.”

Dad had also that rare ability to notice the things most folks walked right past.

Billowing white clouds.

A beautiful sunrise.

The smell of a warm summer rain.

He noticed them.

More importantly, he didn’t keep those moments to himself.

“Come here, Benny. Look at this full moon.”

Dad never hurried.

Thankfully, I inherited a little of that from him.

Dad never tried to gild gold or paint a lily.

He simply appreciated what was already there.

A sunrise didn’t need brighter colors.

A full moon didn’t need polishing.

A summer rain didn’t need improving.

Neither did the people he loved.

Looking back, I think that’s why some of my favorite memories aren’t polished either. A picture hanging a little crooked. A worn spot on the front porch. A coffee mug with a chipped handle. Funny how the things we remember most are rarely the flawless ones.

Shakespeare says don’t add ornament to something already beautiful.

Billy Strings expands that to say beauty often lives because things aren’t polished.

Dad embodied that.

As these Bills—one from Stratford-upon-Avon, one from Michigan and one from Pond Creek—reminded me this week, sometimes the most meaningful things, even with imperfections are indeed… already perfect.

If you’ve never heard Billy Strings perform “Gild the Lily,” it’s worth five minutes of your time. Listen to the words. You just might find yourself looking at a sunrise, a full moon, or even a slightly crooked picture frame a little differently.

🎵 Gild the Lily (video)
📖 Full song lyrics

Folks, I’m on the road today, driving north through the thinnest slice of Virginia and pretty much the entire state of West Virginia.

So you’re getting a bit of an abbreviated story this week.

I’m headed to Wheeling where, this weekend, I’ll join a bunch of former teammates, coaches, cheerleaders and trainers for our biennial Salem College Football Alumni Reunion.

I always confuse biennial and biannual. For anyone else afflicted with this vocabulary conundrum, biennial means every two years, while biannual means twice each year.

Now you know.

It should be a grand weekend and, if history is any indication, provide enough stories to fuel a future Front Porch Files. Shew… say that three times fast.

Before I sign off for a weekend of football, though, I want to mention the other kind of football. You know… fútbol.

Here in the States, we call it soccer.

A new FIFA World Cup champion will be crowned this weekend.

Now, I’m not much of a soccer fan. Matter of fact, if you asked me to explain the offside rule, it would be something like my brother Steve grabbing the mashed potatoes before Dad finished saying the Sunday dinner blessing.

But during this World Cup, I’ve found myself watching something that has very little to do with soccer.

Truth be told, it’s left me feeling hopeful.

While millions have been watching matches, I’ve been watching something else entirely.

I’ve been watching 47 other nations discover America.

Not New York.

Not Hollywood.

Not Washington.

America.

The waitress in Texas who calls everyone “Hon.”

The old veteran who quietly picks up the lunch tab after hearing a family is visiting from Argentina.

The volunteer who spends twelve hours directing traffic and refuses a dime.

The woman who smiles and says, “Y’all come back now.”

Maybe that’s why I’ve never understood the phrase “Ugly American.”

The America I know doesn’t live on television or social media.

It lives on front porches, church pews, Little League fields, county fairs and backyard cookouts.

It lives in ordinary people doing ordinary acts of kindness every single day.

Sometimes it takes the rest of the world visiting our home to remind us just how beautiful that home really is.

Y’all have a wonderful weekend.

And be kind.

I’ve been at war with my waistline for the better part of my life.

I’ve won my share of skirmishes. I’ve celebrated a few decisive victories. There were even seasons when I had the Forces of Fat backed into a corner, waving a little white napkin in surrender.

Today?

Let’s just say the enemy has regrouped.

My belt has become more of a peace treaty than a fashion accessory, and I’m operating somewhere between “Maybe I should cut back” and “Somebody hide the Little Debbie cakes.”

It’s been a long war.

As we’ve talked about here on the porch, I grew up surrounded by family. Aunts over here. Uncles over there. Momaw next door. Looking back now, I wasn’t being raised…

…I was being strategically overfed. Or over loved. After all, in Appalachia food = love.

Let’s rewind to 1974.

My day started like every other seven-year-old’s.

I’d eat breakfast at home, head off to Varney Elementary, then enjoy whatever mystery cuisine the school cafeteria happened to be serving that day.

Mission accomplished.

Or so I thought.

That afternoon I’d climb aboard Bus No. 202.

Our driver was Charles Hatfield, though nobody within fifty miles ever called him Charles. He was “Chuckles.”

To this day I have no earthly idea why.

Chuckles would stop at the mouth of Church House Holler, fold open those bus doors like the gates of heaven, and I’d begin my march home.

Unfortunately…

…my first stop wasn’t actually home.

It was the aunts’ house. Aunt Clara Mae, Aunt Nell, and Aunt Madge.

Now don’t misunderstand me. They loved me. They cared about my education. Both were teachers at Varney, and they made sure my homework got checked before I ever thought about playing.

They also believed no child could properly solve multiplication problems on an empty stomach.

There were Oreos.

Cold milk.

Leftover biscuits.

Sometimes Aunt Madge’s banana pudding.

Looking back now, those ladies weren’t tutoring me.

They were laying down artillery fire.

Homework complete, I’d continue my advance up the hill toward Momaw Trout’s house because Mom and Dad were still working.

Dad was at the dry cleaners.

Mom was helping him.

Momaw was waiting.

And there has never been a grandmother in the history of Appalachia who greeted a skinny—or not-so-skinny—grandchild by saying, “You’ve probably eaten enough today.”

No sir.

“Benjie, let me fix you something to hold you over ’til your mom and daddy get home.”

By the way…

Thank the good Lord above that “Benjie” didn’t survive into adulthood.

Now let me ask you something.

Can one person make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich better than another?

Science may say no.

I say science never tasted one made by Momaw Trout.

That woman could spread peanut butter with the precision of a surgeon and somehow make grape jelly taste like it had been blessed.

She’d slide that sandwich over with a handful of potato chips like she was presenting the Medal of Honor.

Some days it’d be baloney instead. It was just as good.

Either way…

I’d absorbed another direct hit. By now I’m already well above the daily recommended calorie intake.

Then around six o’clock Mom and Dad would finally get home.

And just when I thought the bombing had ended…

Mom would roll out supper.

Hot.

Homemade.

And impossible to refuse.

Day after day.

Year after year.

The enemy kept reinforcing.

Eventually I found myself wearing the dreaded HUSKY jeans.

When your pants surrender before you do, you know the enemy has deployed Weapons of Mass Expansion.

Nothing boosts a young boy’s confidence quite like walking down the hall and advertising his shape and size to the entire student body.

Whoever invented that apparel line ought to be sentenced to wearing a swimsuit with the word “Lumpy” stitched across the backside.

Thankfully, I eventually found my secret weapon.

Sports.

Football especially.

Turns out running until you hear your lungs scream, “please stop” burns an astonishing number of calories.

Between football, baseball, weight training and endless hours of playing outside, I slowly began reclaiming territory.

From about 1977 until the end of college in 1989, I had obesity on the run.

The waistline was retreating.

The uniforms fit perfectly.

Victory seemed inevitable.

Then sports ended.

The war didn’t.

Since then it’s been an endless campaign of advance…

…retreat…

…advance…

…retreat.

I’ve also discovered something they never tell you when you’re twenty.

As birthdays pile up, calories multiply in the dark.

Nowadays my biggest fear isn’t a flat tire.

It’s a shirt button achieving escape velocity and taking out an innocent bystander at Food City.

And yes…

I understand the math.

Consume fewer calories than you burn.

Exercise more.

Eat less.

It’s beautifully simple.

It’s also remarkably difficult when biscuits still smell like childhood and banana pudding tastes like family.

Maybe that’s really the point.

The battle is never just with food.

It is with memories.

Every bite reminds me of people I loved, kitchens I miss, and voices I’d give anything to hear one more time.

Still…

The war isn’t over.

I’ve won battles before.

Maybe it’s time to start winning a few more.

Besides…

I’d much rather keep writing about biscuits than wearing them.

Folks are making a lot of the heat these days. Best I can recall, growing up we never made too much of a fuss about it.

It’s summer. You know what happens in the summer? It gets hot.

Of course we’d talk about it, because weather is one thing we Kentucky folk have always talked about, especially the older porch sitters. There was nothing like a good weather conversation. Heck, bring up the humidity and we were good for about an hour.

But for us, it wasn’t an end-of-the-world situation.

We’d talk about it, and we’d deal with it.

So let’s talk about it, because there’s some fun here.

As a youngster in the ‘70s, I couldn’t have cared less about the heat. My main weather concern was whether we’d get in a full afternoon of Wiffle ball before the heavens unleashed the next golly-whopper.

But I do have some heat-related memories.

See, our home didn’t have air conditioning back then.

Mom would simply instruct us to “close the curtains and keep the door shut.” She only had to worry about me shutting the door once because I was up and gone by 8:00 every morning.

I’d return that evening strawberry red, my shoulders nearly blistered—and sometimes they were. See, not only were air conditioners absent, but so was sunscreen.

She’d break open an aloe plant and rub it on the burn, or she’d pop the lid off that cobalt-blue jar of Noxema and smooth it over my shoulders. Sometimes it was that Bactine pump spray. I can still smell that stuff today.

Mom avoided cooking anything that required the oven for long. She figured adding another twenty degrees to the house might just lead to spontaneous internal combustion.

We had box fans, oscillating fans and window fans—most of them purchased with S&H Green Stamps Mom faithfully collected and eventually traded in on one of our trips over the mountains to Pikeville.

Summertime also meant sun tea.

Simple, really.

Throw three or four tea bags into a covered jar, fill it with water and set it outside on the picnic table.

The tea steeped naturally in the summer sun. She’d bring it inside, sweeten it up, and that was that.

It was tea, Kool-Aid or lemonade all summer long.

And somehow it always tasted colder poured into one of those Ball mason jars than it ever did out of a regular glass.

Sometimes she’d fill up an ice tray with Kool-Aid, cover it with plastic wrap, pop some toothpicks through it and stick it in the freezer.

Boom. Homemade popsicles. That’s what we called them.

The nights were the only time the heat ever got the better of me. Trying to sleep in an eighty-degree bedroom was no fun, especially if you had to share a bed. We’d open the windows, point a fan in the right direction and spend the whole night kicking at the sheets.

Then there were the church ladies during the summertime.

They’d be all gussied up in their dresses, girdles, pantyhose and Lord knows what else.

Thank goodness for those paper fans.

You know the ones—a piece of cardboard with a Bible verse or a picture of Jesus glued to a Popsicle stick.

Every pew had three or four ladies waving those things back and forth faster than they chewed on that half-stick of Doublemint gum they’d dug from the depths of those enormous purses.

If you leaned just right, you could catch the breeze from two… maybe even three… of the fanning church ladies.

All the while Dad would be up in the pulpit, sweat rolling down his forehead, preaching…

“Brother… y’all think it’s hot in here…”

Yep, it was hot.

Truthfully, those afternoon thunderstorms were a welcome break.

Only problem was, after the storm rolled through, the sun would pop right back out and somehow it would instantly feel five degrees hotter than it did before it rained.

I also remember that as storms approached, Mom would have me disconnect the television antenna from the back of the TV and place the metal clothespin and cable inside a glass jar.

Didn’t want lightning getting to the television.

And heaven forbid Dad miss Lawrence Welk.

While we’re talking about the heat, we mountain folk sure had—and still have—a bevy of euphemisms, quips and sayings about just how hot it was.

A few that come to mind…

It’s so hot I saw a dog runnin’ a rabbit and both of ‘em was walkin’.

It’s so hot that ol’ hen laid hard-boiled eggs this mornin’.

It’s so hot I saw a possum come outta the woods with cold towel on the back of his neck.

It’s so hot my thighs done declared war on each other.

It’s hotter than blue blazes.

It’s hotter than a snake’s belly in a wagon rut.

It’s hotter than Georgia asphalt.

It’s hotter than a two-dollar pistol.

It’s so hot I saw two trees fightin’ over a dog.

And if I only had a dollar for every time I heard…

“It ain’t the heat… it’s the dang humidity.”

Finally, there’s one joke that has stuck with me for more than fifty years.

Not really because it was all that funny.

It’s simply because I heard it while we were vacationing in the Smoky Mountains.

Back then, Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge hadn’t yet become what they are today. But there were still plenty of little motels, restaurants and theaters tucked into the mountains.

One evening we went to see Archie Campbell’s Hee Haw Show.

One of the comedians was The Fabulous Phred Smith.

Yes…

Phred.

He told this joke about the heat, and for whatever reason, I’ve never forgotten it.

Phred looks over at Archie.

“Arch… it’s hot out there today. Don’t know I’ve ever seen it any hotter.”

“I walked down to the store this afternoon.”

“Mildred got to hankerin’ for some popcorn, so I went to fetch her a bag. Figured she’d pop it later this evenin’.”

“Well, I got that sack of popcorn and started walkin’ back home.”

“Wouldn’t you know… it was so hot that corn commenced to poppin’.”

“That popcorn was flyin’ outta that paper sack every which way.”

“There stood these two ol’ mules beside the road.”

“And you ain’t gonna believe this…”

“They saw all that popcorn poppin’ through the air…”

“…thought it was snowin’…”

“…laid down…”

“…and froze to death.”

Now, I told ya it wasn’t all that funny.

But it is funny how certain little moments stay with us forever?

Looking back, I don’t remember us complaining all that much. We sweated. We drank another glass of tea. We found the shade. We sprayed each other with the water hose. We waited on the afternoon thunderstorm, and when it finally rolled through, we’d stand on the porch and smell that wonderful wet earth before the sun came back out and started cooking us all over again.

Maybe that’s why those old sayings still make me smile. They weren’t really about the weather. They were about making the weather something to laugh about. Every generation has its own way of dealing with hard things. Ours just happened to involve box fans, church ladies, aloe plants, Kool-Aid, and enough colorful expressions to fill a Farmer’s Almanac.

Stay cool, my friends. Before long, we’ll be wishing for one of these hot July afternoons while we’re scraping frost off the windshield and saying it’s “colder than the seat of a coal miner’s outhouse at midnight in January.”

As a child in the ’70s about this time each year I walked around just plumb giddy. I could barely contain myself because I knew The Fourth was just days away.

Truth is, I’m not sure which threw me into a bigger frenzy back then, Christmas or the Fourth of July. But I’m here to tell ya that The Fourth was something pretty dang special and, for our clan, rather unique.

As I’ve alluded to in previous posts, both Mom’s and Dad’s families were quite large. Eight siblings on the Varney side and ten among the Trouts. Many of them, with their own kids in tow—my cousins—left Pond Creek, escaping the coal mines and finding more rewarding and certainly less dangerous careers.

Now we’d see them a couple of times independently throughout the year when they’d visit. That was fine, I reckon, but it was nothing—and I do mean nothing—like The Fourth.

The Fourth brought on a mass convergence of Trout and Varney humanity and, for once, it seemed like aunts, uncles, siblings and cousins somehow outnumbered the jar flies and honeybees.

The Varneys gathered at the Old Home Place—that’s what they called it. My three aunts still lived there in the house where they had been born and raised. Clara Mae, Madeline and Nell. Lord willing, they’ll each get their own Front Porch story one day… especially Aunt Nell.

The Old Home Place sat just below us. Our house, where the Trouts gathered, was only about 200 yards up the hill.

Looking back, I realize how special that really was.

Dad’s family celebrated on top of the hill. Mom’s family celebrated below it. And all day long, cousins, aunts, uncles and neighbors wandered that little stretch of hillside like there wasn’t a Trout side or a Varney side at all.

There was just home.

The Varney get-together was always just a tad bigger because it had become tradition, started by my Momaw Varney, to invite all the neighbors as well. She passed before I was born.

The Varney shindig was so large, in fact, that it had to have its own chairman… or commissioner… or director. Whatever. You get the picture.

That person was my Uncle Clayton Varney, a proud former United States Marine and a mine electrician by trade.

On the Fourth, America had Uncle Sam.

We had Uncle Clayton.

Rest assured, he took his role as Fourth of July Commissioner every bit as seriously as any order he’d ever been handed by a USMC Major.

Uncle Clayton had me and my brothers on a 6:30 a.m. wake-up call every Fourth. No questions asked.

It was, “Up at 6:30 and report to the canning house.”

What’s a canning house, you might ask?

In short, it was a small building where the year’s harvest was brought in and canned for sustenance until the process was repeated the following year.

Anyway… 6:30 sharp.

There was work to be done.

Horseshoe stakes had to be driven into the ground. Badminton and volleyball courts had to be lined. The croquet course had to be set up. Picnic tables had to be placed. Chairs from the church had to be unloaded.

We used a 50-pound bag of lime to mark off the volleyball and badminton courts.

I learned that if we spread it thin enough, we’d have enough left over to line the big field for the afternoon’s Fourth of July Wiffle Ball Classic.

It was busy and it was work.

In fact, if I hadn’t known all the fun that was about to follow, I might have called it cruel and unusual punishment.

But somehow, by the grace of God, we’d have everything ready to go by 9 a.m.

Meanwhile, back up on the hill, the Trout clan wasn’t nearly as busy.

Dad wheeled the grill out beneath one of the maples. We’d pack the coolers with ice, RC, Pepsi and Nehi—grape was always my favorite. No diet colas and surely nobody would ever bottle water to drink. That’s what the garden hose was for.

We’d place the picnic tables and folding lawn chairs, set up the badminton net, and we were gold.

No need to drive horseshoe stakes. At our house, they stayed in the ground from May until the first of October.

You’d typically hear the first clank of horseshoes around 10 o’clock, and there was no sweeter sound.

The Fourth had officially begun.

I’d glance down the hill and cars would begin filing into the field at the Old Home Place.

It was all coming together.

Dad would eventually get called away from horseshoes for grill duty.

Now, this was always an adventure.

The grill was nothing fancy. Not even close to the contraptions they have today.

It was a big round grill bed that looked like an upside-down UFO, mounted on two wobbly aluminum legs and anchored by plastic wheels hanging on for dear life with a couple of wing nuts.

He’d rip up a Piggly Wiggly paper bag, dump a bag of Kingsford charcoal on top of it and light it around the edges.

I’d faithfully stand by his side if he needed me to fetch something.

At least that’s what he thought.

Me?

I was there for the charcoal lighter fluid and the flames.

“It’ll only take a squirt or two.”

Yeah… right.

Next thing I know we’ve got a five-alarm fire under the maple tree, babies crying and singed eyebrows—all in the name of trying to light a grill.

Of course, it would die down as quickly as it flared up, and we’d do it all over again.

Finally, the charcoal would catch, and all would be well.

The Trout menu was basic.

Burgers. Hot dogs. Chips. Baked beans. Maybe potato salad or macaroni salad.

But everything tasted better on the Fourth of July.

Probably a good thing we kept things simple on the hill because there was an absolute smorgasbord waiting down below at the Varneys.

Between the family and the neighbors, they’d lay out enough food to feed everybody on Pond Creek… twice.

It was more than burgers and hot dogs.

There were salads, deviled eggs and enough casseroles to make a Baptist church potluck look like a snack.

Corn casserole. Chicken casserole. Bean casserole. Fruit casserole.

I think they even had a casserole casserole.

And my heavens, the desserts.

Banana pudding was always my first stop.

Chocolate this. Strawberry that. Cookies here. Fudge there.

You could just look at the dessert table and your blood sugar would shoot straight to 280.

Not only did everything taste better on the Fourth… you never got full.

Unless you were my Aunt Nell.

After a burger, some casserole something and a piece of cake she’d put her hand on her stomach and declare, “Lord children… oh children… I ate too much. I’ve got to go lay down.”

We kids had our suspicions, though.

We figured Aunt Nell was sneaking off to have one of those cigarettes she never smoked.

Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink.

Some of the Varneys wandered up the hill to visit the Trouts, while plenty of Trouts drifted back down to the Old Home Place.

Stories were swapped.

Family news was shared.

And, naturally, the latest gossip somehow managed to circulate between both hillsides before sunset.

The yards stayed busy with middle-aged uncles discovering they weren’t nearly as athletic as they remembered, eventually deciding horseshoes was a much more reasonable sport.

Moms, aunts and cousins filled the croquet course.

And we kids?

Well, the afternoon belonged to us.

We all headed to the big field.

It was the one day each year we had enough cousins to field two complete teams of nine for The Fourth of July Wiffle Ball Classic.

Heck, we even had benchwarmers.

And thanks to Uncle Clayton’s leftover lime, we had baselines, foul lines and batter’s boxes.

One year we even managed on-deck circles.

All the while, Uncle Clayton—the Fourth of July Commissioner—would finally ease into a chair and watch it all unfold.

Kids running.

Horseshoes clanging.

Volleyballs flying.

Neighbors laughing.

The smell of charcoal drifting through the holler.

He rarely said much.

He didn’t have to.

Mission accomplished.

Another Fourth of July the family would spend the next 364 days talking about.

Just before dusk, both the Trouts on the hill and the Varneys below would cut into watermelon, tell one more story and promise to do it all again next year.

While I liked watermelon—and still do—it always made me a little sad.

It meant cousins would soon head home.

The clanging of horseshoes would fall silent.

The echoes of laughter rolling through the holler would slowly fade away.

I can still hear Uncle Clayton’s voice.

“Now, that was a fine day. Hope y’all had fun. Thanks for coming. Drive home safe… and we’ll be prayin’ for you.”

I’ve celebrated plenty of Fourth of Julys since then.

Bigger fireworks.

Louder celebrations.

Nicer grills.

More comfortable lawn chairs.

But none of them have ever felt quite like those days on Pond Creek, when the Trouts gathered on the hill, the Varneys gathered at the Old Home Place below, and one retired Marine quietly made sure everybody had somewhere to laugh, eat, play and belong.

Fittingly, Uncle Clayton left this world on July 4, 2007.

Seems about right.

After all… if anybody deserved to be called home on Independence Day, it was the man who made sure ours was always worth celebrating.

A week ago, the wife and I went to the movies to catch opening night of Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day, his latest foray into the world of UFOs, aliens and all things extraterrestrial.

From Close Encounters of the Third Kind to E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial to War of the Worlds, Spielberg has had his hands in more than a few alien-fueled adventures.

In the spirit of full transparency, here’s a disclosure of my own.

I’ve long had a fascination with UFOs—or UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena), which is now the government’s preferred term.

Come to think of it, from UFOs to Bigfoot to ghosts, pretty much anything paranormal sparks my curiosity.

I reckon I came by it honestly.

My older brother Tim is much the same way and has been for as long as I can remember. The man loves horror movies, monster movies and anything that goes bump in the night. Always has. Naturally, he had an influence.

But perhaps an even bigger influence was where I grew up.

Long before Congress or Spielberg started talking about “disclosure,” folks throughout the Tug River Valley in Pike and Mingo counties already knew the truth: the mountains were weird, the roads were dark and the monsters were local.

The first time I ever gave UFOs much serious thought was in the parking lot of the old South Williamson Piggly Wiggly.

I’d often ride along with Dad when he took Mom grocery shopping. Mom never had a driver’s license and never drove, so grocery shopping was a family affair.

One evening, an old coal miner from Pond Creek who worked at Eastern Coal’s No. 7 Mine was leaning against his truck talking with Dad through the rolled-down window. Dad knew him. Me? Not so well.

He started sharing stories about working outside the mine at night.

Back then there wasn’t much light pollution. Aside from a few bulbs strung here and there around the tipple, the darkness belonged to the mountains. On a clear night it felt like you could reach up and touch the Milky Way.

J.D. said he and the other miners would often see strange lights high overhead. At first they’d appear motionless. Then they’d dive toward the valley, stop on a dime, change direction and hover.

He recalled how bright they were when they descended.

“They’d light up the hills like flippin’ the switch on a thousand Christmas trees.”

I can still hear his closing words.

“I ain’t sayin’ they was aliens… but I ain’t sayin’ they wasn’t, neither.”

You’d hear stories like that from miners and coal truck drivers.

These were practical, hard-working, God-fearing men talking about unexplained lights hovering over mountaintop tipples and deep hollows. They never made too much of it. They’d probably spit their Beech-Nut, watch the lights shoot off into the night and head back to work.

But while strange things happened in the skies, rest assured they happened on the ground, too.

The 1970s brought a nationwide wave of Bigfoot sightings. Some may have been real. At the very least, the people reporting them believed what they saw.

Others?

Well… not so much.

We had our own Bigfoot on Pond Creek.

Enter the legendary Ball Fork Monster.

Back when coal was still king in Pike County, Ball Fork Mountain became home to its own version of the hairy beast. Reports surfaced of a creature roaming the mountain road, often hurling sticks and rocks at coal trucks as they slowly climbed the grade.

The Ball Fork Monster became local celebrity material. Stories spread across the mountains like wildfire. Before long, everybody had heard about Bigfoot on Ball Fork.

Now, for those unfamiliar with this part of Kentucky and the people who call it home, please allow me to explain something.

When a problem presents itself around here, it tends to get “taken care of.”

You know what I mean.

And apparently nothing sounds like more fun than gathering a few buddies, loading up the firearms and heading into the hills in search of Bigfoot.

So a posse was formed.

Whether it was the first Bigfoot posse in Appalachian history, I couldn’t tell you. But one certainly headed up Ball Fork Mountain.

After all, if you caught Bigfoot, there might be fame involved.

Maybe even fortune.

Now, before I continue, I should mention this story could have ended very badly.

Thankfully, it didn’t.

The group of well-armed locals marched into the woods determined to track down the creature once and for all.

And track him down they did.

The Ball Fork Monster was cornered.

The beast realized he was moments away from becoming a very unfortunate newspaper headline.

That’s when a well-known local fellow everybody called Blue Eyes ripped off his gorilla mask and yelled:

“Hey boys! Hey boys! It’s me! It’s me!”

Turns out Bigfoot wasn’t Bigfoot after all.

It was Blue Eyes.

I knew ol’ Blue Eyes.

He used to attend our high school football games. He passed away several years ago. Good fella.

Well, mostly a good fella.

Maybe not quite as good after he’d had a few cold ones and decided to put on his gorilla suit.

No charges were filed. The whole thing was eventually chalked up to a prank—albeit one that came dangerously close to becoming a tragedy.

Dad, who owned the dry cleaners in Williamson, claimed that Blue Eyes once brought the gorilla suit in to be cleaned.

I have absolutely no idea whether that’s true.

But I’d like to think it is.

I could go on for days about the strange happenings of the Tug Valley.

The haunted hospital on the hill.

Wood Boogers.

The Wampus Cat.

The Haunting of the McCoy Well.

The restless souls of the Matewan Massacre.

The tragic tale of Mamie Thurman on 22 Mine Road.

The stories are endless.

And I’ve got a feeling a few more Front Porch Files may come from them.

But for now, I’ll leave you with this:

Maybe Spielberg is right.

Maybe disclosure is finally coming.

Then again, maybe the folks back home figured it all out years ago while standing in a grocery store parking lot or chasing Bigfoot up a dark mountain road.

After all, around Pond Creek, nobody ever seemed too surprised by strange lights in the sky, eerie sounds, or monsters in the woods.

What about you?

Got any legendary tales from your neck of the woods?

Share them in the comments.

I’d love to hear them.

I’m scrapping this week’s planned Front Porch Files entry.

Think of it as being halfway through a story when your granny suddenly leans back in her porch rocker and says, “Them blue jays and squirrels have been fightin’ in that maple tree again,” right when you were getting to the good part.

Sometimes a different story insists on being told.

So instead, I’m going to shoot from the hip about an event the missus and I attended last night in the quaint little town of Jonesborough, Tennessee.

Before I get to the show itself, let me give a quick shoutout to Jonesborough.

It’s only about twelve minutes down Boone’s Creek Road from our house—ten if you catch the red lights just right and don’t get stuck behind somebody sightseeing.

They say time travel is impossible.

Jonesborough, established in 1779, respectfully disagrees.

As Tennessee’s oldest town, it feels like a place where history never quite packed its bags and left. The narrow main street is lined with brick storefronts, antique shops, coffee houses, and some pretty darn good places to eat. It’s the kind of town that invites you to slow down, wander a bit, and stay longer than you intended.

It’s also home to the National Storytelling Festival, which draws thousands of visitors each year. The 2026 festival will mark its 53rd year, proving that even in an age of smartphones and streaming services, people still crave a good story.

Now, back to last night.

The sold-out event was held at the recently refurbished Jackson Theatre, and I had circled it on my calendar the day it was announced. Any gathering that promises Appalachian stories and Appalachian music is going to get my attention.

And in my mind, nobody blends those two ingredients quite like Sean Dietrich—better known as Sean of the South.

According to his online biography, Sean is a columnist, humorist, multi-instrumentalist, and storyteller known for his commentary on life in the American South.

My own description is a little different.

Take Andy Griffith, Bill Gaither, Hank Williams Sr., Will Rogers, and Jeff Foxworthy. Mix thoroughly. Let simmer. What comes out is Sean Dietrich.

For nearly two hours, Sean shared stories and songs that had the audience laughing one minute and quietly wiping tears the next. At times, I’m pretty sure the two emotions crossed paths somewhere in the middle.

One story would leave the room roaring with laughter. The next would remind you of your grandparents, your church, your childhood, or somebody you’ve lost along the way.

At one point, he transitioned from the old gospel hymn Victory in Jesus straight into Rocky Top without missing a beat.

Truth.

And somehow it worked.

Well, it worked right up until the Alabama native proudly tossed out a “Roll Tide.”

Music is a key ingredient in Sean’s storytelling. Whether it’s a fiddle, a banjo, or a simple melody tucked beneath his words, the music becomes part of the story itself. Sometimes it’s background. Sometimes it’s punctuation. Sometimes it’s the punchline.

Throughout the evening he talked about family, Southern traditions, church, food, growing up, getting older, and the people who shape us along the way.

In other words, he talked about life.

What impressed me most was how effortlessly he connected with the audience. His wit draws you in. His stories keep you there. And somewhere along the way, he reminds you of things you didn’t realize you’d forgotten.

Truth be told, watching Sean work a room with nothing more than stories, music, and authenticity felt a little like watching somebody live out a dream I’ve carried around for years. As someone who loves telling stories and preserving memories, I found myself admiring not just the performance, but the calling behind it.

I’ll admit, it hit close to home.

A large part of what I try to do here with Front Porch Files is preserve memories, stories, and pieces of a culture that shaped many of us. Sean is doing that on a much larger stage, but the mission feels familiar.

He’s preserving the South—not the stereotypes, but the stories. The grandparents. The church dinners. The front porches. The family stories. The humor. The music. The traditions that don’t always make headlines but somehow become the things we miss most.

In a world that often feels loud, angry, and uncertain, spending an evening with Sean of the South felt like stepping onto a front porch where everyone was welcome.

You leave lighter than you arrived.

If you’re unfamiliar with Sean, I encourage you to visit his website, his YouTube channel, or his Substack and spend a little time getting acquainted.

And if you ever have the opportunity to attend one of his live shows, put it on your calendar.

You won’t leave disappointed.

You’ll leave blessed.

As I’ve chronicled in prior Front Porch Files, Saturdays as a kid in the ’70s were pretty special. Aside from going to the movies, playing wiffle ball, and getting into the usual neighborhood shenanigans, there were Saturday mornings.

It was me and the TV.

That was the one moment each week when I had some say-so over what channel the dial was turned to.

Yes, we had a dial.

And a grand total of three channels from which to choose.

There was no streaming, no cable, no video on demand, no DVR, no DVDs, no VHS tapes. Nothing remotely close to today’s endless entertainment options.

Oh, and that reminds me—we didn’t even have a remote control.

Actually, being the youngest in the house, I was the remote.

Whenever somebody wanted to switch between ABC, NBC, or CBS, I’d hear my name.

My sister Sue couldn’t have cared less until around 12:30. That’s when Dick Clark’s American Bandstand came on and teenage girls across the nation tuned in to see the latest heartthrobs and find out what all the cool kids were wearing.

My brothers Mike and Steve had pretty much entered the workforce by then.

Tim might weigh in every now and then, but for the most part, Saturday mornings belonged to me.

That meant a solid four-hour block of cartoons, Schoolhouse Rock, and the occasional live-action show.

By the way, “Conjunction Junction, What’s Your Function?” was always my favorite from the Schoolhouse Rock collection.

The Saturday morning breakfast menu was usually pretty simple: Frosted Flakes, Rice Krispies, or Super Sugar Crisp.

I never thought much about it at the time, but I’m sure the ease of pouring a bowl of cereal was a welcome break for Mom, too.

The best part?

Saturday morning breakfast was one of the few meals I was allowed to carry into the living room and eat on a folding metal contraption affectionately known as the TV tray.

Remind me sometime to tell you about TV dinners.

I’d usually start the morning with Speed Buggy or Yogi Bear—just enough time to polish off the cereal, slurp up the remaining milk, and settle in for the main event.

Now, this cartoon business wasn’t always easy.

Every Saturday seemed to present at least one major dilemma.

Case in point: I was a huge Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! fan. But I also loved Bugs Bunny and the entire Looney Tunes gang. The television powers-that-be seemed determined to schedule them against each other.

Most weeks Bugs won out.

After all, you weren’t just getting Bugs Bunny. You were getting Foghorn Leghorn, Elmer Fudd, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Yosemite Sam, and the whole crew.

Besides, most of us could identify the guilty culprit that Shaggy and Scooby were eventually going to unmask about five minutes into the episode anyway.

I absolutely loved The Jetsons. I can still sing the opening theme song word for word.

And of course there was Super Friends.

Here you had Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Robin, and Aquaman all teaming up to save humanity every week. To a young kid, that was about as good as television got.

Sometime around 1974 or ’75, I became hooked on the Saturday morning live-action and variety shows.

Land of the Lost immediately shot to No. 1 on my list.

Marshall, Will, and Holly head out on what should be a routine expedition and somehow wind up trapped in a world filled with dinosaurs.

Throw in those terrifying Sleestaks and, for a seven-year-old boy, that was peak drama.

Plus, I always thought Holly was kind of cute.

Another favorite was Shazam!

Billy Batson traveled the countryside with Mentor in the grooviest RV you’ve ever seen. Without fail, they’d encounter people facing problems that required a little more help than an ordinary human could provide.

That’s when Billy would shout, “Shazam!”

In a flash, he’d transform into the mighty Captain Marvel and save the day.

The Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show was another so incredibly ridiculous it was drop-dead funny. Real-life brothers Mark, Brett, and Bill Hudson made up the trio, and they packed every episode with music, sketches, and slapstick comedy.

Then there was H.R. Pufnstuf.

To this day, it still enjoys a loyal cult following.

The show followed a boy named Jimmy as he navigated a bizarre world filled with life-sized puppets while battling the wicked Witchiepoo and her Vroom Broom.

Looking back, I’m still not entirely sure what was going on in that show.

I usually closed out my Saturday mornings with Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids.

It managed to tackle serious topics while still delivering laughs, music, and valuable lessons.

Yes, those Saturday mornings were great.

You know what I miss most about them?

Not the cartoons.

Not the cereal.

Not even the TV tray.

I miss having something so simple that I looked forward to all week long.

By noon, Bugs Bunny had said goodbye, Scooby had solved the mystery, and the Super Friends had saved the world once again.

And somehow, I was already looking forward to next Saturday.

Now, I know I’ve left a bunch of Saturday morning favorites off my list.

What were yours?

Leave them in the comments and help me remember a few I may have forgotten.

Badibba, badibba, dibba…

That’s all, folks!

George Orwell’s dystopian nightmare? Nope… not that 1984.

The current world feels a little too close to that nightmare for me to willingly go down that road.

I’m talking about the real 1984.

The fun 1984.

The boom-box-blaring, arcade-playing, “be home around dark” 1984.

And I’m prepared to make a bold statement here today:

1984 may have been the greatest year. Ever.

Seriously.

Now admittedly, I may be slightly biased.

It was my senior year of high school. College was just over the horizon. Responsibilities were few. My biggest concerns in life mostly revolved around gas money, Friday night football, Saturday night plans and whether somebody had remembered to bring the cassette tapes.

I made good enough grades to stay off my parents’ radar, which back then was considered academic excellence.

Fun was paramount.

And ohhhhh, the shenanigans.

Some stories are best left untold. Mostly because statutes of limitation exist for a reason.

Now before somebody asks — yes, of course there were more important years in my life.

The year I got married.

The year my son was born.

The years spent teaching and coaching.

The years experienced navigating two career changes.

Those moments changed my life forever and rightly sit atop the mountain.

But if we’re talking collectively — culturally, socially, musically, recreationally — if we’re talking about America just flat-out vibing?

I firmly plant my flag on 1984.

The world seemed to be in pretty good shape. We weren’t tangled up in major wars. Gas averaged about $1.18 a gallon, which sounds fictional to anybody under 30.

The economy was humming along. Unemployment was falling. Consumer confidence was high. Inflation wasn’t trying to choke the life out of everybody every time they walked into a grocery store.

And pop culture?

Good gracious.

The entertainment world was absolutely on fire.

Let’s start with music.

I’ve long maintained that the 1980s produced the greatest overall variety of music ever assembled on planet Earth.

And 1984 may have been the crown jewel.

Didn’t matter what kind of music you liked — pop, country, rock, metal, R&B, rap, new wave — there was something incredible coming through your speakers.

Prince. Bruce Springsteen. Phil Collins. Tina Turner. Lionel Richie. Madonna. Van Halen. Hall & Oates. Run-DMC. Iron Maiden. Willie Nelson. Michael Jackson. Kenny Rogers. Rod Stewart. Kool & the Gang.

I mean… come on.

That’s not a playlist.

That’s an all-star team.

And the beautiful thing was everybody listened to everything.

One minute you were hearing “Jump” by Van Halen.

The next minute somebody’s mom was vacuuming the living room to Lionel Richie.

Then by evening your buddy was trying to breakdance on a piece of cardboard behind the school gym.

It was a magical time.

And then there were the movies.

Listen… I will debate this topic until they lower me into the ground:

1984 was the greatest movie year in history.

Hollywood was absolutely dealing heat that year.

Just look at this lineup (and it’s only a few of them):

• Ghostbusters

• Beverly Hills Cop

• The Terminator

• A Nightmare on Elm Street

• Gremlins

• The Karate Kid

• Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

• Police Academy

• Revenge of the Nerds

• Footloose

• Sixteen Candles

• Red Dawn

• Purple Rain

Good luck finding another year that can match that murderers’ row.

Back then, going to the movies actually felt like an event.

And if you were lucky enough to live in a small town, somebody always knew somebody who knew somebody working the ticket booth.

I’ll leave it at that.

The sports world was equally electric.

The Summer Olympics in Los Angeles captivated the country. We watched Carl Lewis fly around the track winning four gold medals while Mary Lou Retton flipped her way into American sports history.

Meanwhile, the NBA Finals gave us Celtics versus Lakers — Larry Bird versus Magic Johnson — basketball royalty at its absolute peak.

Also, the Bulls drafted some young guy named Michael Jordan.

Baseball fans watched the Detroit Tigers win the World Series.

The Raiders steamrolled Washington in the Super Bowl behind Marcus Allen.

Eric Dickerson ran for 2,105 yards like defenders were wearing work boots in wet concrete.

And on July 4th, King Richard Petty won his 200th and final NASCAR race at Daytona.

Two hundred wins.

That number still doesn’t even sound real.

And maybe that’s what I miss most about 1984.

Things just felt… lighter.

Not perfect.

Just lighter.

We weren’t constantly connected to every bad thing happening on Earth every waking second. If somebody wanted to argue with you, they had to do it face-to-face instead of hiding behind a keyboard and a profile picture of their dog.

You could disappear all day long and nobody panicked.

You just showed back up at supper.

Maybe every generation feels this way about a certain slice of time.

Maybe nostalgia has a way of polishing the rough edges.

But doggone it… 1984 was special.

And I honestly believe we knew it even then.

What about you?

Is there a year that stands above all the others in your life? What makes it special?

Was there a time when everything just seemed to click?

I’d love to hear about it.

Across America this weekend, grills will fire up, pools will reopen, and highways will fill with families headed toward beaches and ballgames as the unofficial start of summer arrives.

And as it should be, many will pause to honor the military men and women who lost their lives in service to this nation. Others will remember parents, grandparents, siblings, and friends now gone.

It’s Memorial Day weekend.

History books tell us the holiday began in 1868 as “Decoration Day,” established to honor those who died during the Civil War. Nearly a century later, in 1967, the federal government officially renamed it Memorial Day.

But in our little pocket of Appalachia, many folks never quit calling it Decoration Day.

And truthfully, for us, it still is.

Long before it became a national holiday, Decoration Day was deeply rooted in the mountains. It was never simply about a three-day weekend. It was about family, remembrance, and tending to the resting places of those who came before us.

The name itself was literal.

Families gathered each spring to clean graveyards, clear brush, rake leaves, scrub headstones, and place flowers on graves — decorating them with care and respect.

That wasn’t always easy work in the hills of Appalachia.

Many cemeteries were located high along ridges or tucked onto steep hillsides, largely because the flat land below was needed for farming. Some old-timers would even tell you the graves were placed higher up so the departed could rest a little closer to God.

Those graveyards didn’t have groundskeepers or perpetual care funds. Their upkeep fell to the families and church communities connected to them. So every year, people returned with rakes, shovels, push mowers, weed eaters, and brush clippers to reclaim the cemeteries from another year of mountain growth.

Looking back now, Decoration Day had little to do with the national holiday itself. It represented something deeper — a sacred bond between the living, the dead, and the land they shared together.

Growing up, Decoration Day wasn’t a single afternoon for our family. It was practically a week-long effort.

The Trouts and Varneys had loved ones buried in several cemeteries scattered across the area. Preparations usually began days ahead of time.

On the Trout side, Dad took the lead, and my brother Mike was always right there with him. Papaw Trout rested in the old cemetery along U.S. 119 between Belfry and Toler. We had family buried at the head of Coeburn Holler and others near the foot of Coeburn Mountain.

On the Varney side, family members were buried in a private cemetery below Toler in the Back Gem area. My uncles, Opie and Clayton, handled much of the work there, usually with help from us cousins — often me and Kevin.

Back then, heavy-duty equipment really wasn’t an option.

Maybe you had a push mower, a weed eater, brush clippers, a rake, and a wheelbarrow — tools that worked you just as hard as you worked them. Though I will say the arrival of the string trimmer was probably one of the greatest technological advancements Decoration Day ever saw.

The women usually handled the headstones and flowers.

They’d show up with buckets filled with some homemade mixture of bleach, soap powder, and who-knows-what else mixed together on somebody’s front porch. I suspect the EPA might frown on those cleaning methods today, but those stones always came out shining.

The flowers themselves came from places like Murphy’s or Hobbs — colorful plastic or silk arrangements attached to wire frames. The ladies took pride in placing every one of them just right once the cleaning was finished.

And somebody — without fail — always ended up wrestling with that hard Kentucky clay trying to shove those wire stems into the ground.

But Decoration Day was never treated like a chore to rush through.

It was preparation. Care. Respect.

It was family sweat equity.

And that, more than anything, separated a true Appalachian Decoration Day from simply attending a Memorial Day cookout.

In the mountains, cleaning the graveyard was — and still is — considered sacred duty.

Then came the decorating itself.

Usually on Sunday, families would return dressed a little nicer than they had been during cleanup week. Flowers were carried from grave to grave while older relatives slowly made their rounds through the cemetery.

That’s when the stories started.

Some elder in the family would pause at a headstone and begin explaining who someone was, how they were related, where they lived, or what kind of person they had been. For us younger ones, it became a living history lesson passed down among the graves.

Honestly, it may have been the best kind of history a child could ever learn.

Decoration Day extended beyond family, too.

No matter which cemetery you visited, there were always others there doing the exact same thing. Friends. Neighbors. People you may not have even been related to.

Yet somehow, everybody felt connected.

There was a quiet understanding that we all shared the same mountains, the same hardships, and eventually, the same earth.

Things have changed now.

Some of those old family cemeteries no longer exist. Others sit mostly untouched as communities scattered and younger generations moved away.

Modern cemeteries are different too — carefully manicured, corporately managed, lined with flat markers and standardized rules. Efficient, perhaps, but lacking the rugged intimacy of those old hillside graveyards cared for by hand.

Still, even as the world changes around us, Decoration Day reminds us who we are.

It reminds us that remembering people takes effort. That honoring family is not something outsourced or automated. And that in Appalachia, love has always looked a lot like showing up with dirty hands, tired backs, and flowers meant for someone who can no longer say thank you.

Maybe that’s why the mountains still call it Decoration Day.

Do you and your family still call it Decoration Day? Is tending to graves of loved ones a tradition in your family? Share in comments.

Different kind of Front Porcher this week. Less reading, more pictures.

Not much storytelling from me this time around because, honestly, the barns do most of the talking.

I’m not entirely sure why they speak to me the way they do. I didn’t grow up on a farm. Sure, I had aunts and uncles nearby who kept big gardens and worked the soil every summer, but there weren’t any cows, chickens, or pigs in my everyday life.

Still… I’ve always loved barns.

Maybe it’s because they remind me of a slower time. Hard work, yes — but a life that seemed a little less rushed and a little more grounded.

Or maybe it’s because every old barn feels like it’s holding onto something. Stories tucked away in weathered boards, rusty tin roofs, fading paint, and leaning doors that have seen generations come and go.

Whatever it is, I find peace in them.

Especially around here.

The barn scenery is plentiful in our little corner of northeast Tennessee, and this week I thought I’d simply share a few favorites with you. Each one of these photos was made within about ten minutes of my front door.

Scroll and enjoy the view.

Hope that satisfied your barn fix for a bit. What generates an instant moment of peace for you when you see it? What memories are rekindled when you see a barn in a field? Let me know in the comments.

We have a local radio station here in Northeast Tennessee that plays nothing but old country music classics. I don’t listen to it all the time, but I give it my fair share — especially on the weekends.

Last Saturday afternoon, I heard an oldie that instantly transported me back to around 1978. The song? Get ready folks… it was a certified banger.

“Convoy.”

For about a three-year stretch, that little ditty by C.W. McCall fueled a frenzy that swept the nation.

Yep. We’re talking the CB radio craze.

“How ‘boutcha good buddy? You got your ears on?”

Those magical boxes full of transistors, knobs, and soldered wires could be found in cars, trucks, and homes everywhere. CB radios sparked songs, TV shows, and even movies on the big screen.

Obviously, the CB radio came prior to the song.

But McCall’s “Convoy” surely poured gasoline on the fire.

It inspired the movie Convoy starring Kris Kristofferson and Ali MacGraw — which was basically 90 minutes of truckers trying to outrun the law.

The king of CB-themed movies was Smokey and the Bandit.

You had Burt Reynolds, Jackie Gleason, Sally Field, Jerry Reed, and one bold, black, beautiful Pontiac Trans Am that instantly became every teenage boy’s dream vehicle.

I’m telling you, that Trans Am and those CB radios had folks driving a little faster and wanting radio handles that sounded a whole lot tougher than they actually were.

Goes without saying, much of the dialogue in both movies happened over the crackle of CB radios.

Television wasn’t far behind either.

You had B. J. and the Bear, The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo, and The Dukes of Hazzard all riding the coattails of CB radio fever.

And oh yes, they were big on Pond Creek too.

The rhythmic back-and-forth chatter of coal truck drivers hauling loads up and down US 119 made sure of that.

One eventually found its way into the Trout home. For that, I blame our cousin, Big Harold. That’s what we called him. That’s what everybody called him.

Heck, for the longest time, I thought his real first name was “Big.”

He was considerably older than me at the time — more along the lines of my brothers Mike and Steve. Maybe even a little older than them.

Anyway, he had a CB proudly mounted just under the dash of his vehicle. Naturally, my brother Mike bought one too. At the time, he was driving a black 1978 Dodge Warlock pickup truck, which back then was about the coolest thing rolling around our neck of the woods.

When he got home from work, I’d wrestle his keys away, head out to the truck, crank it up, and sit there listening to the CB.

I never really talked much.

I just listened.

I was absolutely enamored with it and soon started asking Dad for one of my own. Being the youngest in the family, he often gave in to me. I didn’t take it for granted, but I’d learned how to coax him just right.

One evening he came home with a CB he’d purchased from Jimmy Taylor’s Electronics Shop, located right beside my dad’s cleaners on Logan Street.

Now keep in mind, this wasn’t some plug-and-play setup.

We needed cable. We needed an antenna. We needed a plan.

So naturally, it became an ordeal.

We set it up in my bedroom, which I was sharing with Tim at the time. We drilled a hole through the hardwood floor, dropped the cable underneath the house, ran it across the cold, musty crawl space, and fed it out through one of the foundation vents.

From there, another 75 feet of cable stretched up the hill to the antenna we mounted on one of the metal posts holding up Mom’s clothesline.

Yep. Most of our clothes were still dried in fresh mountain air back then.

All in all, it took a couple of days.

But when we finally fired that baby up, I was in breaker-breaker heaven.

I quickly got a grasp on the lingo and soon became fluent in CB.

• Breaker 1-9 — the standard way to knock on the door of somebody listening.

• Got your ears on? — a polite way of asking if anyone was out there.

• 10-4 — you’re exactly right.

• 10-20 — where are you right now?

• 10-100 — universal code for the sure-to-come bathroom break.

Truth be told, this was our original social media.

Today, everybody’s glued to a screen.

Back then, we were glued to the mic.

Funny thing is, the tools have changed, but the behavior really hasn’t.

Nowadays it’s common for siblings to sit on the same couch and text each other. Some even scroll through their phones at the supper table. Me? Heck, I’d leave the room entirely and go sit alone in a dark bedroom just to talk to total strangers through a CB radio.

We didn’t have emojis.

But we did have S-meters, modulation knobs, and enough static to peel paint off the walls.

It was basically 1978’s version of a group chat.

Big Harold still goes down as the undisputed CB king of our neighborhood. To this day, I have the scars to prove it.

Having an antenna outside his house wasn’t nearly good enough for him. He wanted that signal high and lonesome so he could talk to folks from Belfry all the way to the Ohio River.

So one Saturday morning, about five of us left his house carrying an antenna, what seemed like miles of cable, hammers, rope, staple guns, and enough supplies to invade a small country.

We’d hike a stretch, staple the cable to a tree, then hike another stretch and do it all over again.

Up and up the mountain we went until finally we reached the top, where naturally we had to locate the tallest poplar or sycamore tree around to mount the antenna.

Funny thing…

It took a whole lot less time getting back down that mountain than it did climbing up it. Between the scrapes, the falls, the briars, and some poison ivy we all got pretty roughed up that day.

Once we got back to the house, we fired that thing up and the sounds were glorious.

Voices from near and far crackled through the speaker.

Mission accomplished.

Honestly, until I heard “Convoy” over the weekend, I’d forgotten just how much fun those CB days really were.

Today’s world has gone from massive antennas to tiny smartphones… which, truth be told, still lose their signal in the hollers.

Back then, voices traveled through static instead of fiber optic cables. We didn’t have the smartphones, notifications, emojis, or followers.

We just had handles, antennas, and a whole lot of people listening.

So here’s a big hearty 10-4 to the days when the world somehow felt smaller… because we could all hear each other through the static.

Did you or any of your family have a CB radio back in the day? Let me know in the comments.

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If you even remotely think this week’s entry has anything to do with Yacht Rock, you’re dead wrong.

A lot of folks from the city—or even just more crowded places—figure the mountains are quiet. You’ve heard it before: “I’d love to get away up there for some peace and quiet.”

I know better.

There’s noise in those hills. Plenty of it.

I mean, have you ever heard a Pike County bullfrog try to out-sing a coal train?

Growing up along Pond Creek, the mountains were never quiet—especially in the summer. They had their own kind of symphony. Truth be told, some nights it sounded less like a symphony and more like Lollapalooza.

Either way, the mountains were alive. And they were loud.

Mornings started with songbirds easing the day in. By afternoon, the jar flies took over, sawing through the heat like they had something to prove. And when the sun slipped behind the ridge, they handed things off to the night shift—frogs, crickets, owls, and whatever else felt like making itself known.

Before I go much further, you’ve got to picture the lay of the land.

In Pike County, it was usually a steep mountain on one side, a narrow valley at the bottom, and another mountain rising up on the other side. Down in that tight stretch ran a road, a creek—and more often than not, a set of railroad tracks.

Those hills funneled melting snow and spring rains down toward the creek. But not all of the water made it that far.

Low spots along the tracks would hold water, creating our own version of the Everglades—minus the gators. Plenty of snakes, though.

We had one of those spots near our house. Just a short walk from the front porch, down at the bottom of the hill before the tracks.

We called it The Swamp.

And that it was.

By August, that water turned the deepest shade of green you’ve ever seen. Tree trunks stood half-submerged, coated in moss and algae. It didn’t stink exactly—but it sure wasn’t pleasant.

Funny thing is… I kind of miss it.

I don’t know everything that lived in that hot mess, but I do know this—it was frog heaven. And come nighttime, they were the headliners.

I’m not exaggerating… they were so loud it could keep you awake.

Now keep in mind, this was before air conditioning. Windows stayed open, and every bit of that nighttime soundtrack came rushing in—whether you wanted it or not.

During the day, we’d ease down along the edge of the swamp. Catch tadpoles. Scoop up frog eggs. Try our hand at playing scientist. Every now and then we managed to raise a frog or two… most times, not so much.

Looking back, that swamp might’ve had something to do with me majoring in biology later on. Hard to say.

What I do know is that place sure produced the sounds.

Some frogs twanged like loose banjo strings. Others—the peepers—hit a high pitch that could cut right through you. And then there were the bullfrogs… deep, steady, impossible to ignore.

The nights had an eerie edge to them, too.

Owls saw to that. Mostly screech owls and barred owls in our neck of the woods. You’d hear them call out from somewhere up the hillside, and you just knew they were keeping the frog population in check.

Crickets filled in the gaps, steady as a drumline. And behind it all, a chorus of insects you couldn’t name if you tried.

Then there were the sounds you couldn’t explain.

A knock against a tree. A thump out in the dark.

We didn’t talk much about those. But we sure heard them.

And the darkness itself… that was something.

Not the kind you get now. This was true dark. No glow from streetlights. No spill from a neighbor’s porch. Just a sky so full of stars it looked like someone had brushed a streak of white paint across the ridge.

And somehow, we still stayed outside longer than we should’ve—chasing lightning bugs and dropping them into mason jars like we were bottling up a little piece of magic.

It’s different now.

Sure, there’s still noise—but it’s the hum of fans, the whir of AC units, the steady rush of traffic. Not much of it feels natural.

And sometimes, when it gets a little too quiet in the wrong kind of way, you realize something’s missing. Not just sound—but presence.

Like a piece of nature packed up and slipped away.

Truth is… I wouldn’t mind lying there one more night, wide awake…

Listening to those Pike County bullfrogs.

What do you remember from your youth about the sounds of growing up where you lived? Let me know in the comments.

We started out playing real baseball in what we called “The Big Field” at my aunts’ place—Nell, Madge, and Claire Mae. It sat just a stone’s throw from my front porch, right by those railroad tracks I wrote about a couple weeks ago.

And I mean real baseball—hard ball, wooden bats, aluminum if you had one. Big-time stuff… until it wasn’t.

One day, Troy Rutherford launched an absolute moonshot to right field. Not a question of if it was a home run—more like where in the world is that thing gonna land?

You know the kind—everybody just stops. Gloves drop. Eyes go wide. You’re not fielding anymore… you’re witnessing.

Problem was, it was headed straight toward Uncle Clayton and Aunt Birdie’s house.

As it came down, I’m pretty sure we all started praying.

BAM.

Square into the aluminum gutter above their front door.

Dead silence.

Then that door flew open and Aunt Birdie lit into us like we’d just declared war. Nobody confessed. Nobody moved. We just absorbed it.

That was the end of real baseball in The Big Field.

By the way, we never saw that ball again.

But that didn’t end baseball.

Not even close.

Enter: the wiffle ball.

Whoever invented that glorious hollow piece of plastic deserves a statue somewhere in Appalachia.

We didn’t always have enough for full teams—sometimes we did, most times we didn’t. Four or five players? Didn’t matter. We made it work.

And in our minds, we weren’t in a patch of grass in eastern Kentucky.

We were in Yankee Stadium.

Game on the line. Crowd roaring. October baseball - only it was June.

The best games were just us cousins: me, Keith, Roger, and Boo.

We played nearly every day in the summer. I was the oldest—about 12. Keith and Rodge were 10. Boo was 8 or 9 and still figuring this whole ball thing out.

I don’t know how Rodney ended up with the nickname “Boo,” but to this day, it stuck. I call him Hot Rod just to keep things interesting.

Now our teams were always the same: me and Boo vs. Keith and Roger.

It was the only way to keep things halfway fair.

I was swinging for the fence every time. Base hits were for people with patience—I didn’t have any.

Keith? Pure athlete. Could hit for power, hit for placement, run anything down, or strike you out if he felt like it. One of the best athletes the Trout family ever produced, no question.

Rodge was steady as they come. Nothing got past him, and at the plate? He always made contact. I don’t remember him ever striking out.

And Boo… well, Boo was Boo. Still a little green, but he could slap a single and usually catch what came his way—as long as it didn’t involve heavy machinery.

With only two fielders, we had some… creative rules.

Anything hit left of second base? Automatic out.

Unless—and this was important—you absolutely crushed one over the left field fence into Oscar Spence’s garden. That was a home run… and a lost ball. Oscar wasn’t exactly welcoming when it came to kids in his tomatoes.

A shot into the road? Home run.

One bounce to the road? Ground-rule double.

Drainpipe in dead center? No rule associated. You park one there it was instant legend status.

No walks. Ever.

Ghost runners? Everywhere.

Looking back, that “no left side” rule probably taught me to hit opposite field better than any coach ever did.

We modeled everything after the big leagues.

The biggest argument every single time? Who got to be the Yankees.

Keith and I both wanted them—no surprise. We didn’t exactly discover the Yankees on our own… they were handed down to us. His dad and my two older brothers made sure of that. Somewhere along the way, pinstripes just became part of the family DNA.

Rodge and Boo both were Reds fans.

So most days it was Yankees vs. Reds. Occasionally Dodgers or maybe Pirates, but that was rare.

We played full nine inning games. All day long. Only breaks came from the aunts’ warm garden hose water that somehow tasted perfect anyway.

And yeah… things got heated.

Arguments, debates… and on at least one occasion, I introduced language into the game that had absolutely no business coming out of a 12-year-old.

The others were innocent bystanders in that department.

Nothing physical—unless you count the time I threw my glove at Keith and questioned his entire upbringing.

Most of those games have faded over time.

But one?

One is permanent.

We call it The Tractor Incident.

We were playing a full World Series—best of seven.

Keith and Rodge were the Yankees. Me and Boo were the Reds.

Back and forth we went until it came down to Game Seven.

And I mean it—this was everything. Bragging rights for life. Legends of The Big Field.

Top of the ninth.

We’re up 3–2.

One out to go.

I’m on the mound. Keith’s at the plate.

Full count.

He pops one up into foul territory.

Routine. Absolute can of corn.

Boo’s under it.

Game over. Right?

I’m already starting to celebrate in my head.

Then… he stops.

Just… stops.

Ball drops to the ground.

Season over? Not yet—but close.

“Boo! What are you doing?!”

And I’ll never forget his answer:

“I thought I was gonna run into the tractor.”

Now mind you… the tractor wasn’t moving. Hadn’t moved all day. Probably hadn’t moved all week.

But in Boo’s mind—that John Deere was a clear and present danger.

I try to regroup.

One more out. One more pitch.

I rear back and fire.

Crack.

That hollow, soul-breaking sound of plastic meeting plastic.

Keith goes yard.

Tie game.

Yankees win in extras.

And just like that… The Tractor Incident is born.

I was mad.

Real mad.

So naturally, I did what any reasonable older cousin would do…

I banned them from the swimming pool.

We all went on to play real baseball—Little League, Babe Ruth, high school.

But nothing—nothing—touches those wiffle ball days.

If I could go back for just one more…

Sunburned, sweating through my cap, drinking warm hose water…

Plastic bat in hand, pointing to right field like Babe Ruth.

Funny thing is, you learn a lot out there on a field like that.

Winning. Losing. Tempers. Teamwork.

And every now and then…

Not to count your chickens before they hatch.

You have any fun backyard ball stories? Any legendary games standout among your family and neighbors? Let me know in the comments.

Not wanting to cook, nor having the desire to go out and eat Monday evening, the wife and I opted for a DiGiorno frozen pizza—original rising crust with pepperoni, of course.

So off to Food City I ventured. Before selecting my go-to, I took a little time to peruse the pizza offerings. Deep dish here, stuffed crust there. Supreme, four-cheese, Chicago-style, New York-style. That pizza freezer has changed a lot over the years.

Then it hit me—out of nowhere and strong enough to stop me in my tracks…

At that very moment, I had an unexplainable hankerin’ for that glorious rectangle of dough, sauce, processed meat, and some semblance of cheese better known as school cafeteria pizza. Let’s just call it the ‘Grade School Slice’.

It hit me so hard I did another walk-along the freezer aisle, thinking maybe they had something similar to satisfy my unusual craving. I mean, with all the other offerings, I could find at least something like it, right?

Not to be.

You know, someone should develop, market, and sell that. They can even call it the Grade School Slice.

I know I’m not the only one. To this very day, I can still remember the tastes and smells of the Varney Elementary School kitchen and lunchroom. Come to think of it, the lunchroom was its own universe to us young folk.

The lunchroom experience actually started in the classroom early in the day. We’d bargain for seating rights. Much like one calls “shotgun” when competing for seats in an automobile, we did the same for seats at the lunch table.

“I’m sittin’ beside Kevin!”

“Hey Stephen, who you sittin’ with at lunch?”

“What about you, Mike?”

“He’s with Rodney and Dwayne.”

There was always some stiff competition when it came to sitting beside John Hunt. John brought his lunch, and man, it was always loaded.

He usually had a PB&J, Fritos, a pack of nabs, something chocolate, and a banana slathered with peanut butter. More than all that, he would always bring a Dr Pepper. John always sat at the end of the table, and if you happened to be one of the fellas sitting with him, he’d typically share something with you.

At this point—and I’m talking around third or fourth grade—the guys stuck with the guys and the girls with the girls. Obviously, that would change down the road a bit.

Anyway, by 9:30 in the morning, the aroma of whatever was on the menu that day would start making its way through the hallways, letting us know exactly what was being served.

You can’t erase those smells and tastes, even if you want to. Ahh… the spaghetti and those hot rolls. I miss those rolls almost as much as the pizza.

When you caught that first smell in the classroom, that’s when the bargaining began. All was good most of the time. But if you smelled meatloaf or caught a whiff of sauerkraut, the trade market opened in full force.

“I’ll trade you my mashed potatoes for your apple.”

“I’ll trade you my kraut and wieners for your cornbread.”

I had one trade that never failed. I loved pickles—still do. And for some reason, the cooks loaded us down with pickles on burger-and-fries day. Most kids didn’t like pickles at all, so I’d gladly give up my fries in exchange for theirs.

I even got creative with it. I’d trade half my fries to one for their pickles, and the other half to another for theirs - giving me quite the pickle inventory.

Eventually, we’d all get in that all-too-familiar single-file line and make our way to the kitchen, where the lunch ladies would hand off that plastic tray, silverware, and a small carton of milk.

Not a big fan of that milk carton. Never could get it to open just right. I’d squeeze in the wrong place, and the cardboard wouldn’t separate. We were a few years away from the perforated hole and straw that made milk life a little easier.

At the lunch table, we knew we were being supervised, but there was still a sense of freedom there. The teachers couldn’t quite hear our conversations as we laughed and talked about whatever came to mind.

We kind of felt like we were on our own.

And it felt good.

I’ve never given it much thought, but I guess the lunchroom was about more than just getting the day’s recommended servings.

We communicated. We shared. We bargained. We developed friendships.

And somewhere along the way, between the bargaining and the laughter, between the smell of hot rolls and the struggle with that milk carton, we were learning a whole lot more than what was on that tray.

We were figuring out people.

How to share. How to give a little to get a little. How to sit beside someone different. How to belong.

Funny thing is… I went into Food City looking for a frozen pizza.

What I ended up looking for was that lunchroom.

And I reckon you don’t find that in a freezer aisle.

You have any fun memories or lunchtime faves from your early days. Let me know in the comments.