What's That...What's Going On?!

It's been awhile, about 30 days, since I've posted, which is getting to be about par for the course.  So, I thought I would bring those interested up to date, and maybe prove the point, that retirement is loads of fun!

True, the fun is often broken by a low spot, like the last prostrate laser surgery, but boy, has it ever helped.  If you listen at the door, you would think a young horse was relieving himself!  I mean...even when I was young I never had a stream like the one I'd proudly show off now!

Anyway, I'm back to feeling myself (not literally), and having fun.

Dennis Tufano, Stevie G, and Steve Jarrell

I guess the first great adventure I had following the outpatient procedure was the "Dennis Tufano" concert Princess Productions put on down at the Princess Theatre.  He has lost little in his voice, the original voice of the Buckinghams, and his back up band, The Rockerz, with lead singer and guitarist Stevie G, did a bang up job.  The vintage ladies in the audience were screaming like they were 16 again and the boys on stage loved it!

I'll have to put in a plug for Michael "Crawdaddy" Crawley too.  He warmed up the crowd with his box of harps and his gravelly bluesy sounding voice.  He and went outside at break and took a few snaps of the Princess.

Bill Landry, Elizabeth Rose, Sam Venable, and Jim Claborn

They all loved our Princess, and I sure hope this gets things rolling downtown.  We plan on bringing in a quartet of storytellers next.  They are quite a crew, and well known to East Tennessee.  They spin yarns of Appalachia, country folklore, and even a golf and fishing tale might come out.  I had a recent promo photo shoot with them and they keep me rolling the entire afternoon and into the evening over a brew!

Judy and I are still out hiking when we can, even though the wildflowers came early, we still enjoy a walk down a wooded path by a mountain stream.  There just something about the woods that brings the child out in me again.  Being raised essentially an only child, being ten years older than my brother, I found solace from loneliness among the quietness of Tennessee forests.  I did my best thinking out there and discovered a lot about my self and the world there.

It's like the bear we recently came upon in Cades Cove, or the deer in the front yard.  They are my kind of people!  The only animal we came across that I don't consider "good people, was the grey snake at John Cable's mill!

Even the horses in the fields I see almost everyday take me back to a time when I got to be a kind of country cowboy, riding through the woods with my cousin Larry.  

Or the time Richard Lacher and I sneaked into a "walking horse" barn near our trailer park in Florence.  There we met the devil, and his name was "Midnight Sun", a Tennessee Walker of some renown.  

He saw us before anyone and wanted to kill us immediately, although "walkers" are generally gentle!  Came right up to us, trying to break through the steel gate, snorting like the wild thing he wanted to be again!  Probably was all that anger in having to wear those cruel weighted shoes, "stacks" (stacked pads), or weighted chains his trainer made him wear.

I discovered from the embedded web link that he was born in 1940 and accumulated quite record over his career, being a world champion in 1945 and 1946.

Last weekend I shot the "Cruisin' Harriman" car show downtown, which occurs the second Saturday of each month, April - August.  That's always a hoot, and I love community events, and the history that comes alive because of them.  Take this Saturday, it's the seventh annual WWII reenactment at the Secret City Festival in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.  I can't wait to see all those tanks, half-tracks, and American and German reenactors running amidst all that smoke and gunfire!  Talk about a hoot and a feast for a photographer!

Photo actually by Kaitlyn Russell

I missed a great feast last week by being too old to tackle Bonnaroo!  The only shot I got was from my granddaughters iPhone...the arch as you enter the rock'n playground for wannabe hippies!  Alas, it's as close as I'll ever get, but I just want to give her credit for sticking it out!  She almost gave it up after the first day of heat, and being ignored, but sucked it up and stuck it out for the full "right of passage" tour!

I'll stick to my hikes, waterfalls, old barns, lotus ponds, and visits to the strange "world's tallest tree house" in Crossville!  That's about as far out as I want to get these days.  That's my element at this stage in my life.

So, I'll sign off by telling you that I'm bushed...we had a big thunderstorm last evening, with the power going off at 9PM and not coming back on until 5AM.  I don't sleep well in the dark...pitch darkness, that is, or in quietness so still I can hear my heart beating.  At this age you think the next beat might be the last one, and you just don't want to hear that last one.  I run an air filter in my room to mask all the static noise...heart beats, squeaks from house expansion and expansion, crickets outside, the refrigerator running, or Judy snoring!  Without, I'm wide awake!

The rain and hail came down in buckets, and I was still there clicking away.  I made these HDR renditions of it all, even catching that spooky orange glow that comes in some storms.  

So with that...see ya next time...maybe sooner than 30 days...IF I got got shots during the war games!

HAPPY BLOGVERSARY TO ME!

Well, it's the 4th anniversary of my blogging career!

Many of you have been with me the entire way, and so 69,000 hits later I find myself still in the game.

Mostly I'm on my own today, since viewership has fallen off, but that's my fault. I seldom write like I used to. It's mostly about current events and family today, not of much interest to many, but it's really my purpose, so I'll continue whether I get readers or not. This is a family pilgrimage and record and thus it's serving its purpose!

HOWEVER, there is a new post coming in a couple of days that is worthy of being included in "The Laugh and Times of Mushy". I hope you enjoy the post. The true story is very important to me and I still hurt over the loss of my friend Steve.

MY BEST FRIEND FROM 44 YEARS AGO

A few days ago I got a call that went something like this, “Hello?”

“Is this Paul Mashburn?”

“Yes?”

“This is Richard Lacher.”

“No kiddin’! Where the hell are you?”

“I’m down the road from you in Spring City…just started working at Watts Bar.”

Long story short, we agreed to meet at the Cracker Barrel in Harriman Tuesday evening and reminisce. So, we did just that!

The last time Richard and I saw each other was about 1964, just before I joined the Air Force. My cousin Mark and I (click for a flash back) drove from Florence, Alabama to Waynesboro, Tennessee to see Richard.

After forty-four years we still hit it off and seemed to pick right up where we left off! I thoroughly enjoyed the couple of hours we spent setting on the front porch of the Cracker Barrel asking each other, “Do you remember…?” and “Didn’t we once…?” Man that felt so good!

There has hardly been an event in my life that I hadn’t wished Richard was there. When you have a close friend that you grew up with, you want them to experience everything you did and that’s just the way I’ve always felt. I suppose part of the reason I wrote all my “Laugh & Times” was in hopes that one day Richard would come along and get caught up on all I wished he had experienced with me!

I told him about “Mushy’s” and gave him one of my “Blogness Cards”, so hopefully he’ll soon be checking out all the great stories he was partly responsible for me writing. Posts like “Cuddles and Puddles”, “Ol’ Smiley Burnette Got the Drop on Me”, “Night Moves”, “My Hands Felt Just Like Two Balloons”, “Breaking Into the Outhouse”, “The Mockingbird”, and “A Scout is Friendly, Courteous, & Kind”.

Richard and I lived in the Mockingbird Trailer Park in Florence, Alabama together twice and in Waverly, Tennessee once over a span of about five or six years. He and I went through puberty together, so, as you can imagine, we analyzed everything, but we were definitely “working on mysteries without any clues!” These were probably the most important years of our teenage life, and it really hurt when our families finally had to go different directions.

Hopefully now Richard and I can relive the past years, catch up on the lost forty plus years, and even renew our friendship. We have a lot of catching up to do!

Thanks buddy for making the effort and taking the time to give me that call.

DO YOU WANT SOME ENCORE POSTS?

It appears that I may have lost my following here, but since not many of you followed me to The Silverbacks, I wonder if you would come back here for a few more posts that will be included in the book.

What do you say?

I may also come back here for daily life (beer, eating out, bars, hikes, beer, family things, etc.) posts.

So, do you want me to come back here or post somewhere else? I do not, however, plan to publish a "blook worthy" post each week, and certainly not twice weekly.

I miss you guys!

AN INTERVIEW WITH MUSHY

Ok...I don’t usually play, but Kuanyin flew me all the way to Maui and asked me in such a nice way that I could not resist letting her interview me. She started this over at her “tame blog” called WHO’S YO MAMA? Why not check her out!

You already know her as the Blog-Blond, her friskier blog, but you might begin to think she’s normal as “Who’s Yo Mama?”

So, she asked:

1. Would you like your spouse to be both smarter and more attractive than you?

In many ways my wife is smarter than me…oh, I’m the one with the college degree, but when it comes to common sense and financial matters, she has the edge.

Looks? She has that edge too…always has! I remember the first time I ever saw her – those eyes burned my very soul and I wished then and there that she would be mine for all time. However, it took me another 18 years to get back to my senses.

2. When did you last sing to yourself? Dance by yourself?

Oh, I always sing to myself while listening to either an MP3 or satellite radio in the truck. Strange, but when I’m alone I’m great – better than Sanjaya, but when just one other person enters the area I get “all pitchy dawg!”

Sometimes I’ll do a little ditty to the tunes on “American Idol”, or even to a commercial just to get my wife to laugh. Yeah, it’s that bad!

3. Your house, containing everything you hold dear catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have one last point to safely re-enter your home to save one item. What would it be?

I suppose I’d have to run back and pluck my external HD from the computer table – it has all of my photographs backed up. The fire can have the rest – it’s all just “things” that can be replaced, but photos of your life and loved ones could never.

4. Whom do you admire most, and how does this person inspire you?

This is a hard question for me…I do not know any one person that holds all the things I admire in people, or the values that I aspire to uphold.

I have always loved the kind of men Chuck Yeager, John Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln is and was. Don’t ask me why, just that they have meant something to me and if I could meet anyone in history, these three stand out.

Of course, there is my son, Corey. I have admired his strength in working with children, singing, and witnessing in church, and the way he seems to draw people to him. I asked God to give him that strength and He has twofold.

Then there is Yosemite Sam…”I’m a steppin’!” he said as he walked across a line drawn in the sand by Bugs. Strong conviction and nothing stopped him from doing what he thought was right – not even a "Dirty razzlefracken varmint rabbit!”

5. Would you like to be famous, and if so, how?

The only notoriety I have ever fantasized about has been the possibility of publishing “Cross+Hairs” – a better “Cross+Hairs” with no typos and maybe in movie script format. It’s really about me in a lot of ways – like any writer, it’s my baby!

Otherwise, I like being little ol’ Mushy, in my little ol’ life, in my little ol’ town. It’s what was given to me and I love it – wouldn’t change a thing!

MY SINS COME BACK TO HAUNT ME

The sin of pride has separated me, to a degree, from my son and my granddaughter. His mother and I divorced when he was only four years old and his loss still cuts me to the core.

My son’s mother and I have long since forgiven each other for the mutual pain we inflected, and we have moved on with our lives and found wonderful people with which to share our lives. However, my pain remains.

I missed so much in his early life, and just in the last few years regained some since of a relationship with him. Oh, I hung on the fence and watched him play, made pinewood derby cars with him, picked him up each Friday afternoon, and watched him graduate numerous times, but the little things is what I missed. I missed birthday parties, watching him mature, watching him interact with his friends, and things he did vocally and with the youth at his church. I missed his friends and girlfriends seeing me as “his dad.”

Oh, people know I am his father, but they do not know me and accept me as part of his life. I am an outsider, whether I have caused it or not, I am still not comfortable in certain aspects of his life. His world is a separate world from mine. It is probably just me. I have never wanted to horn in where I am not invited. I cannot change what is in me – it would take years on a “leather tufted couch” to overcome the personally held mores I have built up over the years.

I ache to see him sometimes, or to hear from him, yet, because it is in me to be this way, I cannot, at times, force myself into his life. I have no clue why not…it is just the way I am.

I ache to see my granddaughter too, but I really do not know my son or my daughter-in-law well enough to just drop in, or invite myself over as often as I would like. Instead, I make appointments to see her, and yes, to see him.

I sat yesterday trying to drink in as much of their faces, their smell, their movements as possible, but as soon as I left the memory began to fade. I know I take too many photos when I am there, but it is an attempt not to forget and to hold part of them close to me longer.

I will always pay the price for letting my failure take them away.

What Mushy gives back to you today is – work at it! You lose a whole lot more than a woman, your things, and your money – you lose the closeness of children and grandchildren and involvement in their lives for a lifetime.

One thing has gotten me through the tough times - I thank God for Tracy and Katie Bug (my stepdaughter and older granddaughter). They have been God’s blessing on me and they have filled a void in my soul. They make it possible for me to bide my time between visits.