We are now in high school and it’s Wednesday, October 14, 1959. The Wednesday morning chapel has begun and there’s two boys, one freshman and one sophomore on stage ready to perform.
I know the sophomore. He is Don Kiser, with whom I attended Rose Hill grammar school. The other young man with the electric guitar was L. J. Beeler. After high school he became a professional musician backing lots of big stars from Nashville.

Here it is September again. Again, the nights are cooler with warm afternoons. It’s now dark at 6:30 a.m. as the days get shorter with nights getting longer. Time is marching toward fall and then winter.
The kids are back in school, terrorizing the teachers and waiting for fall break. The school buses are loaded to the brim as there’s a shortage of school bus drivers. Knox County started school in August with a shortage of 31 drivers. Less drivers/more kids means problems for bus contractors. Many contractors have to combine different loads to be able to get the kids home. So parents, allow a little leeway for the bus drivers.

“Hat, did you see Sputnik go over then or were you asleep?”
“Heck no, I seed it blinking, same as you.”
Hat was Hat Russell. Hosea was myself, James Perry. All us boys who went to Rose Hill Elementary School together had nicknames. Dan Patch Cooke, Jerry Killer Keller, Hat, Johnny Milton Russell, Jerald Hobock known as Hobock, Howard Wyrick Esquire, Pig Larry Perry, Bobcat Bobby Perry, and Pigtail Dennis Perry. The only boy from our group without a nickname was Wayne Hurst.

Country Connections By James and Ellen Perry
Horace Maynard (1815-1887) served as council when Union County was formed from five counties with only Knox County offering resistance. In the mid-1850s, there was no town of Maynardville. It was known then as Liberty, Tennessee. The Knox County injunction was resolved in 1855 with the assistance of Horace Maynard. In 1856 the town of Liberty became Maynardville because of the appreciation of the county fathers and citizens.

With part two of The Life of Hank Williams, we will go back to November of 1949 and the European tour to entertain United States Air Force servicemen in Germany.
The entertainers and management staff of the Grand Ole Opry, which totaled 29 people, loaded into a C-54 Skymaster of the US Air Force, which had been the official plane of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied Forces during WWII. He later became president of the United States for two terms during the 1950s.

Country Connections y James and Ellen Perry
As I sit here on my front porch in the late evening afterglow on a cool December day, I see a robin in my front yard.
Immediately my memory goes back to a beautiful soul-searching song by Hank Williams from 1949. This line was in that song: “Did you ever see a robin weep when leaves began to die, that means he’s lost the will to live.”

December 15, 1952: It was cold—very cold—in the 26th Signal Corps compound at Inchon, South Korea. Hardy Johnson still wasn’t acclimated to the harsh winter conditions he was experiencing there, nor the stark living conditions that the South Koreans had to endure in 1952.
They had nothing, living in 6 ft. by 8 ft. mud and straw huts, sleeping on dirt floors with no furniture, no water, heated by a tunnel dug in the floor as the hut was built, filled with anything that would burn and covered with dirt.

Just sitting on my front porch enjoying the late September afternoon with the high temps cooling down a bit, letting my mind meander and bring up pleasant visions of the present and past.
I’m seeing butterflies and birds coming through our yard getting nectar from our flowers, building surplus energy for their journey to Central America for the upcoming winter.
Saturday morning, I was standing on the patio when a beautiful tiny green hummingbird flew up within a foot of my face and hovered looking at me for at least 30 seconds, then flew away.

Country Connections By James and Ellen Perry
While sitting on my front porch this late August afternoon listening to Tony Williams and the Platters’ version of “Sleepy Lagoon,” my mind wanders back to the early 1980s.
My family and I lived in Dothan, Alabama. The house next door sold and a new family moved in. They were from New Jersey and had bought the local Greyhound Bus Station. The people who owned the Greyhound franchise for Dothan had built a new bus station in a more accessible part of Dothan.

By James and Ellen Perry
While sitting on my porch this late July afternoon I’ve noticed that the daylight hours have shortened by 23 minutes since late June.
The days getting shorter means we are slowly moving toward fall and then winter. Although the daylight hours are changing, our hottest and driest month is usually August.