There once was a man who said he was going to have his patience tested. (I was positive from his demeanor that he would test negative.) I have been told that I have the patience of Job, but it seems that this year in particular my patience has been pushed to its extreme outer limits on a few occasions. Perhaps this comes as a natural part of the aging process. Having never been in my upper 50s before, I have no frame of reference.

The Bible tells us that in the beginning, God gave the first man and woman only one commandment. They could eat of all the trees of the Garden of Eden except the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. God had a very good reason for this. Before they ate the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve were innocent like children, not knowing that anything was wrong.

My all-time favorite television show is Bonanza. To me, it’s a lot like The Andy Griffith Show—no matter how many times I see an episode, it never grows old. There are two episodes of Bonanza that stand out because of one single statement.

Sunday seems to be the day for travel curiosities in hero Union County, at least for me. A few Sundays ago on my way home from church I saw a man standing at the intersection of Ailor Gap Road and Maynardville Highway (aka Highway 33, State Route 33, Main Street, Maynardville Highway). This man was holding a sign, and as the light was green I didn’t get to read it well, but it did make reference to the Bible.
Interesting, I thought. I’ve lived in Maynardville all my life, and I don’t recall ever seeing anything that resembled a street corner preacher on Sunday or any other day.

There is a commercial for a credit card company that asks, “What’s in your wallet?” I could take some time to tell you, but I’ll let you in on a clue—it’s not money. Instead, I will tell you what is, or at least what used to be, in my pocket.
Which pocket, you ask. Let’s start with the right pants pocket. In one of my doctoral classes at Lincoln Memorial University we were assigned to share the contents of our pockets, but not our identities. From those contents, we were then supposed to try to determine what we could about the owner.

I looked at Facebook today in a way I never have before. I looked at only the first ten posts that popped up from the “friends” in my current algorithm. I safely (hopefully) assume that what a person takes time to post is important to them. Personally, I rarely if ever post anything. I am content to occasionally comment on what my Facebook comrades choose to post.

Just as surely as a purple finch is crimson, the stories I share with you in this article are true to the best of my ever-aging memory.
I was probably about 12 years old. I was visiting with my sister Ruby’s family at her house in East Knoxville. Ruby was actually my half-sister, the oldest daughter and second child from my father’s first marriage.
Ruby’s husband was Alfred John “Buddy” Foulks, Sr., a captain with the Knoxville City Fire Department. They had four children, though the first three were older than me, grown and living on their own.

I don’t know a lot about the Canary Islands, other than that they were named not for birds, but for dogs. You guessed it, I had to do a Google search. Per that search, I found that “the name for the islands actually came from the Latin term for the island, Insula Canaria, meaning ‘island of the dogs’.”
I think a trip to the Canary Islands might make a lovely vacation. I am sure there would be many tourists that would indeed be sights to see. But one does not have to go to the Canary Islands to find interesting, entertaining people to observe.

I heard a story on the radio on my way to work this morning that is worth retelling. It seems there was a wife who was looking at pictures on her husband’s phone. Who knows where the husband was while this was occurring? Perhaps he was mowing the yard. Maybe he was in the shower. The wife was outraged that her husband of so many years secretly had pictures of this young female on his personal phone. This was obvious evidence that he was being unfaithful to her. When the husband made his appearance, a bitter confrontation followed.

Who would ever have thought that “catgut” comes not from cats, but from the natural fiber found in the walls of sheep or goat intestines, and sometimes from the intestines of cattle, hogs, horses, mules, or donkeys! Additional research will inform that catgut is used to make strings for musical instruments.
A friend of mine posted on Facebook that her sign under the Chinese zodiac, according to the date of her birth, was the dragon. It listed her most negative quality as that of being “stubbornly independent”. She questioned whether this was a negative quality.