Country Connections
By James and Ellen Perry
As I sit on my front porch listening to Santo and Johnny playing “Tear Drop” on my computer, it puts me in a melancholy mood.
It’s now late August of 2024 and all of my flying friends are coming through on their way to their over-wintering homes either in the deep south of the USA or the butterflies and hummingbirds are heading south crossing the Gulf of Mexico to the Latin Americas or northern South America.

The weather forecast for today, September 27, 1948, is a high of 75 degrees with clear skies and going down to 52 degrees with clear skies. Annie Crawford, wife of Sam Crawford, birthed a boy child, her fourteenth. Little did Sam and Annie know this baby would grow up to greatly affect the lives of people from an island nation over 1400 miles from Union County, Tennessee.

“Grandma, I’m hungry,” the little five-year-old girl said to her grandma. “Honey,” her grandma said back to her. “We are about out of food, but we will make it some way ’til Monday and get help with food from the Union County Food Pantry. You see, grandma and her husband, called Grandpa, were raising three grandchildren, the children of their daughter who left her kids with Grandma and Grandpa three years ago due to her being a heavy drug user. Her whereabouts are unknown and they don’t know if she is still alive.

“Boys it is time to go home and eat dinner, get some rest, then come back and finish plowing and hoeing this tobacco patch.” This tobacco happened to be on a 30-acre farm in Kettle Hollow that Dad had bought for the tobacco allotment. We unhooked the mule, put her in the pasture, put up our hoes, climbed into Dad’s 1948 Dodge panel wagon and started home. It was early July of 1958. Arriving home about 11:45 a.m. Daddy said, “Boys it’s about mail time and I forgot before driving up the hill to our home. So, you need to go and meet Edd and bring the mail, while I get dinner ready.”

“No, No, Tip,” is from a 1940s -1950s primer school book called “Tip and Mitten.” Tip was, as best I can remember, a devilish scatter-brained puppy who romped and played as most puppies do.
Tip was a boy dog puppy who was scolded for his antics. Tip’s buddy was a kitten named Mitten. Those primer books were written by Paul McKee, who was a professor at the Universities of Iowa and North Colorado. Tip was my first dog encounter.

Country Connections By James and Ellen Perry
A Once Upon a Time video on You Tube by Kenny Vance contains this verse in this beautiful song, “Once Upon a Time there was a Love Sent Down to Earth From Angels Above.” During the late ’50s and ’60s there were lots of Doo-Wop and country songs comparing girlfriends to angels. Try to record a song today that has angel or Biblical phrases and you will be run out of any recording studio in Nashville, LA, Dallas, New York or Chicago. Referring to a teenage girlfriend as an angel only happened once upon a time 70 years ago.

The song of Eddy Arnold’s “Christmas Can’t Be Far Away” reminds me that spring can’t be far away. We’ve had a rough winter with the biggest snow (which started January 14) since the blizzard of 1993.
The snowstorm of this past January left ten inches on our deck. The temps went down below zero for two nights, but we made it through, and now let’s hope we have a long spring this year.

By James and Ellen Perry
It was a cold cloudy morning February 3, 1959. The best I can remember it was on Wednesday morning, and my brothers and I were at home. Our mom was at home cleaning the house, as she had been laid off for a short period from her job at Knox Porcelain Plant. I had our Philco radio tuned to WIVK in Knoxville.

A Good Dog. Every man should sometime in his life be blessed with a good dog. A dog that is as smart as Lassie. Every dog isn’t as smart as Lassie. Most are dumb as a block and lazy to boot.
There are large dogs, medium size dogs and some that resemble a dust mop. Some dogs belong to blue-haired women who put ribbons on their heads and paint their toenails pink. I don’t think the dogs care what color their toenails are or what color the ribbons are. They (the dogs) still like to sniff each other and eat roadkill. They’re dogs.

Country Connections By James and Ellen Perry
Good music soothes the soul and makes you happy.
“Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire,” The first lyrics from Nat King Cole’s, “The Christmas Song.”
This article provides a list of Christmas songs. Some are still played during Christmas on the radio. Some aren’t anymore. There’s info on when these songs were played and where they came from. One of the better known artists actually played on the Mid-Day Merry-Go Round in Knoxville.
I hope you all enjoy these songs.
1. White Christmas by Bing Crosby-1952 version

I’m sitting on my front porch this morning enjoying a cup of coffee as my mind wanders back in time to a spring morning in May of 1955.
My father, my three brothers and I were heading to Sharps Chapel to help our grandfather, who we called Pap, plant his tobacco crop.
Pap was getting old and couldn’t work as he had in the past.
Dad stopped at Bill Graves’ General Store in the Chapel, pulled up to the only gas pump, cranked up three gallons of gas to the top and let gravity put it into the tank of his 1932 Ford Model A Truck.

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.