It was a dark and stormy night, as Snoopy would say, when a young Terry Miller first tried his hand at driving, thanks to his uncle Clifford Steiner.

Twelve-year-old Miller was out for a ride-along from Maynardville to Caryville and back with Steiner when the older man became too sleepy to continue the drive. In a heartbeat, Steiner decided Miller was old enough to transition from passenger to driver. This began a lifetime of adventures for Miller with his uncle Clifford and he has never looked back.

The Union County Memoir Class has three sessions under its belt. We have a good mix of Union County people and there is room for more. The first class had six participants and the last two had eight. Their stories reflect Union County living.

The sponsor of the Appalachian Quilt Trail is Clinch-Powell Resource Conservation and Development Council (RC & D), whose mission is to promote conservation and development by demonstrating regional leadership, securing resources and delivering programs and services that build strong, vibrant communities. During the past year, I have had many questions and pleasing comments about the Historic Quilt squares painted on East Tennessee barns. I am happy that I can now at least provide some information and guide people to someone who can provide the rest of the answers.

Shirley Temple was born April 23, 1928. I was born January 11, 1928. That makes me older than that pint-sized movie star. Hold onto that thought and backtrack a bit. Popular names come and go. Shirley was a popular name for girls and boys, too, at the time. I went to school in Joliet, Illinois with four other Shirley's in my class. I even dated a guy named Shirley. He preferred to be called Bill.

If you know what to look for, you will discover aliens nearby, brutal ones bent on world domination. Some walk around, some fly, but the really dangerous ones blend into the landscape and slowly increase in numbers undetected until it’s too late and they take over. This isn’t science fiction, but a nasty reality show called exotic invasive pests, and many are out to get our forests.

Nowadays a man can get a haircut in a beauty salon. There was a time a man wouldn't have been caught dead in one. My, how times have changed. I got to thinking about a very special haircut when I was getting my hair cut at the the Cutting Crew salon in Maynardville the other day.

The incident I want to tell you about happened in the early 70's. There was a small barbershop on the road into town, like a number of one room barber shops in those years. This one went out of business shortly after our visit.

Mincey’s Musings Year One, Week Eleven, Last week I shared an instance in which I let the preconceived notions of others affect the way I felt about my work study supervisor. That was the first of four instances I want to share, that in which the opinions of others caused me to make an erroneous first impression of another, but which resulted in positive experiences.

There was an old song that went like this: “B-I-N-G-O! B-I-N-G-O! And Bingo was his name-o!” But our dog was named B-A-N-J-O. Banjo was his name-o. Dad had a dog named Banjo when he was a boy and wanted us to have one, too. I was only five when Dad brought home the beagle puppy in 1934.

Last time we concluded by talking about how we can use The Acts of the Apostles as a guide book for better understanding all the Letters (Epistles) which follow it. We proposed to do exactly that regarding Paul’s Epistles to the Thessalonians and what that had to do with Antichrist. So, let us begin.
First, I want to point out something that Luke, the writer of the book we refer to simply as ACTS, had to say in The Gospel of Luke:

The Appalachian Mountains are filled with lore and legends. Legends that originate in places where civilization has only carved a foothold in the wilderness, where the beasts in the woods are a very real threat. When darkness falls they have the upper hand and the forest belongs to them. All my life I've heard about the Wampus Cat, sometimes called a Catawampus. Granny would say "Don't go out at night. The Wampus Cat will get you." Just what is a Wampus Cat?