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.