Everyone knows that Union County is home to a good number of Country Music Stars but did you know it is also the home place of a Visual Artist Star? Enoch Lloyd Branson was born in Union County in 1853 (the year of the birth of Vincent Van Gogh). His family moved to Knoxville in 1868, where Lloyd found work in a brickyard. Around the time of the Civil War, prominent Knoxville physician John Mason Boyd noticed a sketch of Ulysses S. Grant Branson had made on a cigar box, and provided financial assistance for Branson to attend East Tennessee University.

Last Friday, October 20, 2017, Union Countians dressed in pink to show support and raise awareness for breast cancer. Melanie Dykes, organizer of Union County's Pink Out, got involved when the Susan G Komen organization approached her in 2014 looking to distribute information about breast cancer. Melanie says, “According to statistics, Union County is one of four counties across the state that has a high rate of late stage breast cancer diagnoses.” Melanie has been working with a grant to educate and encourage women to get mammograms.

I met David and Mary Nevin when I became involved in the Union County United Way a number of years ago. David taught school here for several years. They have since moved into Knoxville. I think about them often but seldom hear from them anymore. Our paths don't cross like they used to do. Doesn't that happen with a lot of people we know? Time marches on.

I remember the first time I rode in an airplane was in the nineteen sixties on the only airstrip in Maynardville that I’ve had any experience with. It was a little grass airstrip that was located just beyond Cooke’s Mortuary. Clifford Stiner kept his airplane in a small hanger and used the grass strip for a runway. Of course, most of the time, he used the strip for his own pleasure. However, on one occasion a barn stormer pilot, by the name of Jones, had apparently made an arrangement with Stiner allowing him to offer rides for a small fee.

As a young boy, I remember that sometime around Thanksgiving my dad would reserve a day for killing and dressing a hog or two. I remember the weather was always cold. He would build a nice fire and would place a large barrel of water over it. After everything was ready he would kill the hog. We would all pitch in. Using the hot water and a sharp knife we would scrape all the hair off the hog. Then he would proceed to cut it up as a butcher would do. This is the way we were to have meat on the table for months to come.

John Fugate and Linda Baxter come from different backgrounds, but when it comes to agriculture education at Union County High School, their philosophy is the same. They want to prepare students for the reality of today's careers while preserving the rich legacy of Union County agriculture.

"We don't just grow plants and animals," said Fugate. "We grow kids."

Baxter is originally from Colorado, but she attended high school in California, and her family later moved to Memphis. She attended UT Knoxville for pre-vet and changed to agriculture education.

I first knew him when I was about three or four years old as my father’s friend and co-worker. One Christmas when my family lived in one of Jessie Buckner’s rental houses on Academy Street in downtown Maynardville, he sent me a Tonka™ truck. He sent me scraps of wood from his carpentry to play with. When one of the small schoolhouses closed down upon its consolidation into one of the county’s larger elementary schools, he sent me a canvas bag of building blocks. He never knew the countless hours of joy playing with those blocks gave me.

Folks have been gathering for "jam sessions" at Rush Strong School in Sharps Chapel for so long that Lea Ogle can't tell you precisely when they started, but it's been years and years. And it's easy to see why. The warm, wood walls of the old schoolrooms have perfect acoustics for the bluegrass and gospel played there. Plus, there's just something musical in the blood of so many Union Countians that the jam sessions are as much for fellowship as they are for music.

"Some really good pickers have played here," said Ogle, who himself plays mandolin.

I recently came across a newspaper article relating a story from the 1860s about a Union County man reminiscing about almost getting “churched” for gambling! A Mr. Brock owned a store at Hogskin or Blackfox and people were there on a Saturday morning with Mr. Brock organizing a “beef shoot.”

I like chicken. When I was growing up, chicken was for special occasions. When we needed one for a meal, Mother went to the chicken coop and selected a non-laying hen. How did she know which was which? Easy. She would catch one and lay two fingers between the hip bones just below the tail. If that space was wide, she was a lying hen. If it was narrow, her laying days were over. She would be the star of that Sunday dinner.