Country Connections By James and Ellen Perry
As I sit here on my porch in the late evening shadows, I am thinking of men’s necessities in life.
They are: at least one good dog, one good old pick-up truck during your life, an understanding wife who never complains and only thinks of you when you are away, bluebird sky days after a soft rain, a fish on the line every cast, grandchildren who sit on your lap and don’t squirm and are very quiet, a good baseball game on TV, a Sunday afternoon nap and sardines for a snack.
Also, a good barber who tells you jokes.

Dan was always the sergeant, fully in command with the rest of us boys his privates. This summer day we were fighting the Japanese on some Pacific Island.
We crawled, jumped over oak tree stumps, eased through briars and bushes on the Perry farm overlooking Norris Lake in 1954. We knew that our Sergeant Dan was about to have us attack the Japs, win another victory and march home later that day being patriotic soldiers in this boys’ army.

Country Connections by James and Ellen Perry
“Time Changes Everything” was recorded in 1940 by Bob Wills and Tommy Duncan: “Heavenly shades of night are falling, It’s twilight time, Out of the mist your voice is calling, ’Tis twilight time.”
These beautiful lyrics were sung by Tony Williams and The Platters in the late spring of 1958. It was an international hit with lyrics written by Buck Ram in the ’40s. He later became the manager of The Platters.

Country Connections by James and Ellen Perry
Circa 1954: Rose Hill School, five miles north of Maynardville, Tennessee, on Highway 33
Jerald, Johnny Milton, Howard, Dan, Jerry, and Larry, let me tell you what I heard the teachers talking about. I just heard the big room teacher tell the little room teacher that Frank Carter will be here Monday in the big room ’til he gets all the big boys straightened out. I heard that he has three or four boys beginning with Ken to get a lesson in humility by his paddle Monday morning.

Zola Hurst
After my father returned from Europe at the end of World War II, he along with my mother and me moved to his home county that was Union County, Tennessee.
For two-and-a-half years they rented a home in the Central Peninsula that is now called the Chuck Swan Management Area. Then they moved to the Hacker place between Hickory Valley and Kettle Hollow.

Country Connections by James & Ellen Perry
Time marches on. Memories, like old pictures, fade. Family members and old friends die.
The homesteads and farms remembered from youth are torn down or divided and sold by their heirs. Subdivisions are encroaching on our beloved mountains and valleys and now encompass the beautiful lakes we once enjoyed. “Keep off” signs are popping up as developers buy up property and build houses on top of our scenic hills ruining our vistas and changing the mountain silhouettes forever.

Country Connections By James and Ellen Perry
The sun had made its daily trip through Southeast Alabama and had set in the west. Everyone that night in the Elmer Hunter home near Columbia, Alabama, was enjoying supper, and after eating, cleaned the table, washed the dishes and retired to the center room to sit around the fireplace while listening to the radio, talking small talk and getting ready to retire to bed.

Country Connections by James and Ellen Perry
It was late October, the best I remember 1957 or 1958. Our neighbor’s wife, who was also my father’s sister, invited our family to join her family and others for our first Halloween party.

By James and Ellen Perry
As an acorn sprouts and grows into a sapling, then matures into a large oak tree, so did the growth of Paul Roark’s family.
This story begins in the coal mining town of Coxton, Kentucky, which is in Harlan County. Paul was born into a family that had mined coal for generations, as did most boys and men in the region. Paul’s father, after seeing an accident where a miner was killed, decided to move his family north where jobs were more plentiful and safer.

In 1933, the northeast corner of Union County, Tennessee, saw a new business open in Luttrell. A short fifteen years later, after surviving the Great Depression, and World War II with most of the young men serving in the armed forces, the property that consisted of a general merchandise store and a small brick home was sold to Bethel Reed Stowers and he moved his family there.