Category: Darrell Huckaby

I never wanted to be one of those parents who tried to relive their lives through their kids. I always encouraged them to live their own lives, make their own way and discover for themselves what paths they would take. It has worked out well so far, but, each of my children has become somewhat of a legacy of myself, despite the fact that I never encouraged them to be.

Dr. Jamie, our oldest, is most like me 12 times a year. Thirteen, counting bowl games. She has embroiled herself in incidents with opposing fans in every stadium in the SEC. Oops.

Our son, Jackson, is a teacher at North Oconee High School — even though I tried to dissuade him from pursuing a career in education — and is learning to coach girls basketball from Donnie Byrom. I coached girls basketball for 25 years and never dreamed that Jackson wanted to follow in those footsteps — even though he was always a gym rat and with me at every practice and game. I’ve seen their team play half a dozen times and Jackson has a great teacher.

Our youngest child, Jenna, is a third-year student in the Henry Grady School of Journalism at the University of Georgia. Her major is public relations, but I believe people will be reading what she writes for a long time. I thought I would treat you to a sample of her reflections on this year’s Christmas season today. From her pen:

“Just wrapped up another lovely Christmas with my family. I love Christmastime in the Huckaby house. I love how Daddy puts up the biggest real tree he can find and tangles up as many colored lights in it as possible. I love pulling out the same decorations year after year and driving home from finals to see our house from the road with spotlights revealing wreaths and candles in every window. I love shopping with Mama and waging war on Black Friday with Nadia. I love the Christmas parties and listening to Daddy read our many fun versions of ‘The Night Before Christmas.’ I can’t get enough of the movie ‘Christmas Vacation’ or of the Alabama Christmas album.

“I especially love Christmas Eve, when we sing ‘Silent Night’ by candlelight. I still play with the wax. Then we ride through the woods to Grandmama’s house for dinner. Finally, we all sit by the fire, just before midnight, to read the real Christmas story from the Bible before heading upstairs to bed.

“On Christmas Day we are overwhelmed with gifts from our parents, who have spoiled us rotten over the years with every toy or technology we could ever want. I get a new journal from Daddy each year. We never leave the house on Christmas Day. Why would we? Everything and everyone we need are right here.

“Last year was bittersweet, with an unspoken fear in the air. It’s hard to ignore thoughts that it might be someone’s last Christmas when you’re constantly getting discouraging news from so many doctors. But God has heard our prayers and Dad gave us another special Christmas this year, although having him around is worth more than everything under the tree.
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“We learned not to take our family for granted last year. We still miss the big picture sometimes. We don’t always get warnings that we are about to spend our last Christmas with a loved one.

“Mama’s brother died suddenly in September. He was 54. We sure missed Uncle Eddie during this holiday season, but we kept him with us. He was reflected in our gifts and were grateful for the living gift that he has been to us over the years.

“We weren’t the only family with empty seats around the table this year. There were many families in Connecticut that Santa didn’t get to visit. Other families spent Christmas at the hospital. Others had loved ones stationed across the world, protecting our gift of freedom.

“Which brings me to the thing I love most about Christmas. We spend a month buying and wrapping gifts. We enjoy the love of those God has placed in our lives. But while these things will come and go year to year, the original Christmas gift will never be taken away and will never lose its meaning. We celebrate because God gave us a Son who would one day bear so much pain so that we no longer have to. When we accept that gift, it can’t be returned or lost. It’s the gift of hope and joy that we will never have a ‘last Christmas’ because we will one day join the multitude of hosts to celebrate Jesus for an eternity together with our brothers and sisters who have gone before and will follow.

“‘I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.’

“Merry Christmas, y’all. I hope yours was filled with peace and with joy as ours was.”

That goes for me, too. God bless us, every one.

Well, another Christmas has come and gone and now folks are standing in long lines at the malls and department stores to give back all the stuff they got that wasn’t the right size or color or that they just didn’t have any use for. Bless their hearts.

Not me. I make it a point to be happy with what I get, even when I don’t like what I got. Makes life easier. It is kind of like that old country song, “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.”

Besides, I always make sure I get what I want for Christmas by doing a little bit of shopping for myself. Then I wrap the gifts and slide them under the tree without putting who the gift is from on the tag. The kids always assume the presents are from my lovely wife, Lisa, and she always assumes they are from the kids. And no, I am not giving myself away because none of my family ever reads my columns. They are afraid of what I might have said about them, for one thing, and for another, they have never much cared what I have to say.

Even a prophet is without honor in his own home.

This year I gave myself the gift of music. I put several country CDs under the tree. I’m not talking “The Band Perry” or “Lady Antebellum” or any of these Johnny-come-lately country stars that wouldn’t know heartache if it hit them in the head. I’m talking classic country. I got myself Waylon and Willie and George Jones — and I got myself a CD called “The Legend of Johnny Cash.” If Johnny Cash ain’t country, I’ll kiss your grits.

Wallace Christian turned me on to Johnny Cash back in the days of eight-track tapes. I don’t think I ever thought to thank him. Later, I actually got to meet Johnny Cash backstage at the Fox Theatre. It’s a funny story, too.

I ordered tickets as soon as I heard he was coming to town and got great seats, right on the front row of the balcony — on the aisle. I couldn’t wait to see him walk out, look at the audience and say, “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash.”

As curtain time drew nearer and nearer, however, the seats beside me remained empty and I began to fret to my date that the owners of those seats were going to be climbing over us when that magical moment arrived. I was right, too. Just as the Man in Black walked onto the stage, here they came, “Excuse me. Excuse me. Sorry we are late. Excuse me.” That’s what I heard as Cash was introducing himself.

Never one to keep my thoughts to himself, I turned and fussed at the offending couple. Imagine my surprise when said couple turned out to be former governor, Lester Maddox, a good friend.

“I’m sorry, school teacher,” Lester said. “I’ll make it up to you.”
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Let it be said that Lester Maddox always kept his promises. At intermission he and his beloved wife, Virginia, went down to visit with Johnny, who credited Lester with helping him along when he’d lost his way, and June Carter. He brought me and my date along with him. Gov. Maddox introduced me and Cash shook my hand and said directly to me, “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash.” It was a great Forrest Gump moment.

Now understand, every song on my new CD I probably have on other CDs, but this album — ask an old person if you don’t know what an album is — has all the classics — the essentials, if you will, on one disc.

“Cry, Cry, Cry” for when I’m feeling a little blue, and “Sunday Morning Coming Down.” One of my great memories is singing “Sunday Morning Coming Down” with Mike Morgan at Crossroads United Methodist Church.

My new CD has the classics, of course. “Ring of Fire” is on the record and so is “Jackson.”

I sang “Ring of Fire” at karaoke night at Benihana’s on Elvis’s birthday one night and two dozen drunk Japanese people thought I was the greatest singer in the history of the world. Danny and Nancy Preston were witnesses. Ask them. They’ll tell you.

I heard Johnny Cash and June Carter sing “Jackson” together in a farmer’s field somewhere in west Georgia. He tried to kiss her afterward and she said, “I ain’t kissing you. You’ve been in the pen!” to which he feigned great offense and responded, “I have not!”

He hadn’t either. He had been in the Starkville City Jail and the Ringgold, Ga., jail, but not prison.

And of course the CD had “I Walk the Line” and even “A Boy named Sue.”

Ties are nice and everyone needs an iPhone update every now and then, but if you need me for the next couple of days, I’ll be at an undisclosed location listening to some real country music and remembering the way life used to be.

Anticipation. What a wonderful thing. Often the buildup and the wait are better than the event itself. Remember the expression “slow as Christmas?” I haven’t heard that expression in a long, long time. Kids have so much these days that it is hard for most of them to tell when Christmas comes. But I have been eagerly looking forward to this Christmas. The last time I remember being this excited about the great day arriving was the year Santa promised me an electric train.

What a difference a year can make. Last year I told everyone who asked, and a few who didn’t, that all I wanted for Christmas was one more Christmas. I wasn’t funning. There were many days last winter when I would go to bed so fatigued and wracked with pain that I was certain I wouldn’t wake up the next morning. There were many nights when I almost hoped I didn’t.

I was locked in a life-or-death battle with prostate cancer. It was supposed to have been a little skirmish, a minor inconvenience and I assumed that my enemy would be dispatched quite easily by the miracles of modern medicine.

It turned out that my particular case of prostate cancer was quite a worthy adversary. My mother always told me that I was exceptional, even when no one else thought so, and in keeping with my mother’s evaluation, my particular case of cancer was quite exceptional, too. I had the surgery all my doctors recommended, but the cancer had escaped the prostate and was creating havoc elsewhere in my body.

This time a year ago I was undergoing daily radiation treatments that would create havoc with several of my internal organs, but didn’t slow the growth of cancer cells one whit. The cancer, unbeknownst to me at the time, had metastasized into my bones. In the dead of winter, I heard doctor after doctor explain, “I am sorry but you have stage 4 metastatic prostate disease. There is a treatment but the outcome is not particularly positive for most post-prostatectomy patients whose PSA rises exponentially post-procedure.”

Like I said, all I wanted this Christmas was to make it to this Christmas. And made it I have.

Last April, I began treatments at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. I could have gotten the same medicines they use anywhere, but I don’t think I could have gotten the same positive attitude just anywhere else. My doctor in Houston offered me the same treatments I was offered elsewhere. Just like the other doctors I saw, he told me right up front that the treatment wasn’t likely to work at all or that if it did work, it wouldn’t work for long.

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I have been back to M.D. Anderson four times since that first visit. Every time I have been my doctor has been astounded by the fact that the treatments, which he admittedly considered a precursor to the next step, continue to work and that the cancer that was attacking my skeleton has stopped spreading. He allowed himself to admit last week that the effectiveness of the treatment — and my lifespan — might now be measured in years instead of months.

I know my doctor understands science and medicine and human psychology. I am not sure whether he understands the power of prayer or the number of prayers that are being sent heavenward each day on my behalf. But I understand, and I appreciate each and every one.

So here we are, anticipating another Christmas and I want you all to know that I have embraced and appreciated each and every moment of this Advent season. The lights have seemed just a little bit brighter to me, the songs sung just a little bit sweeter and the Christmas goodies just a little bit tastier.

Like George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life” I have realized this Christmas just how blessed I have been and how many friends I have made over the years — many of whom I have never met and will never have the opportunity to meet. More people have shown me more kindness this year than I could have ever imagined.

Embrace this Christmas, y’all. Hold your loved ones just a little bit tighter. Laugh a little more. Linger a little longer with friends and family. Cherish the moments and remember that each day is a gift greater than anything you will find wrapped under your tree.

Lastly, I would like to offer a big thank you to everyone who invites me into your home each week through these columns and into your hearts. Merry Christmas to all and in the timeless words of Dickens’s Tiny Tim, God bless us, every one.

I got the first tweet, I suppose, as soon as the news was made public — speaking now, of course, of the horrific school shooting in Connecticut last Friday. I was giving a final exam to my own students who were quite eager to demonstrate how much they had learned about the history of our great nation, so I turned off my phone and computer and resisted the urge to sit and become engulfed in the wall-to-wall news coverage that has become commonplace when such events occur.

At lunch, I learned something of the ever-increasing death toll and was even more determined to avoid immersing myself in the tragedy that was playing out in New England. I had a book signing after school and a basketball game to attend that night. My emotions were already fragile and I needed to keep them under control as much as possible.

When I finally walked in my back door, at about 11 Friday night, I sat down in my recliner and turned on the television news and took it all in. I cried myself to sleep sometime after midnight.

Schools are supposed to be safe havens, especially for little bitty children. Schools are supposed to be places that children can find acceptance and encouragement. Schools are supposed to be places that children go to learn and be inspired and to have their spirits lifted and minds stimulated. Schools are never supposed to be where children go to die.

We’ve had four days of it now. We’ve heard the sordid story about how a 20-year-old killed his mother and then showed up at a nearby elementary school with his mother’s guns and enough ammunition to kill everybody in the building. We have read the names and seen the faces of the tiny little angels — and the adults — that were massacred in a matter of minutes on a morning in which Christmas vacation, not death and despair, should have been on those people’s minds.

We’ve heard the speculation as to the motive and heard all sorts of information about the killer and we’ve witnessed a town, a state and a country, once again, mourning the mass loss of innocent lives. We’ve heard so-called “experts” come forward and explain how the murderer was also a victim, somehow failed by the state or by society or all of the above.

We’ve heard the gun control lobby start demanding new legislation and we’ve heard zealots simplistically insist that “this wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t taken God out of the schools.” We’ve heard all the same things we have heard so many, many times since Columbine.
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And we all know that, except for the grace of God, the same thing could happen in our community at any time. A similar thing has happened in our community, as many of us all too well remember.

We have a problem in this nation. It is not a political problem. It is not a gun control problem. It is not a mental health problem. It is a societal problem. We are embroiled in an ongoing war between good and evil in society and evil is winning. Winning? Hell, good has become so beaten and battered by tolerance and political correctness that good is barely putting up a fight anymore.

We are, at this very moment, presiding over the downfall of civilization as we know it. There is very little left of the moral and decent and genteel society into which my generation was born. Our young people are exposed to so much filth and sex and violence and the foulest of language — in movies, on television, in music and in the halls of their schools — that nothing, and I mean nothing, seems shocking to them anymore. They spend their days with headphones in their ears listening to who knows what. A majority of them are being raised by single or divorced parents or in blended families, and we have no concept of what a traditional family is supposed to look like — and we are being told that all of the above is OK and that any family unit is just as acceptable as any other.

We are raising a nation of Biblically illiterate children who know more about morally bankrupt celebrities than they do about God and are more familiar with Honey Boo Boo than with Jesus Christ. They have never heard of or seen the Ten Commandments and believe that everything everyone wants to do is A-OK. Live and let live — or live and let die, whatever the case may be.

John Wesley once said, “What one generation tolerates the next will embrace.” Think back to the 1960s and the 1970s and the things we began to tolerate as a nation. Look at the things we have come to embrace. Look at what happened in Newtown, Conn., last Friday and tell me how there is no connection between my rant and the events that took place and then go put your head back in the sand and wait for the next incident.

Meanwhile, may the people of Newtown, Conn., somehow experience some degree of peace during this season that is supposed to be about peace.

We’re getting close, y’all. About a week and a half, give or take an office party here and a Christmas cantata there, and we will have celebrated yet another Christmas season in the North Georgia Piedmont. You know, it really is the season we celebrate and not the date itself. There is way too much love involved with Christmas to be contained in a 24-hour period. Unfortunately, too many of us waltz through the lead-up to the grand day with our eyes closed, paying too little attention to what is going on around us. Then Christmas is gone in a flash and we haven’t experienced the full joy of the journey.

I’ve been guilty of that. Not this year, though. This year I am so very happy to be celebrating another Yuletide. I have paid attention to every nuance of the season. I have savored the taste of every chocolate drop and morsel of Chex mix and every note of every carol and look forward, with great delight, to the surprises the next few days will bring to my friends and loved ones. When Christmas has come and gone this year I will not have missed one moment of its magic.

I took an informal survey of some three or four thousand of my closest friends the other day — translation, I posted the question on Facebook — about their Christmas traditions. I was also delighted to hear of Christmas touchstones that they associate so closely with the season.

I posed the question as an open-ended statement beginning, “I know it is really Christmas when … ” I hope you enjoy my friends’ responses and I hope the list causes the corners of your mouth to draw up in a bow as you ponder the defining moments of your own Christmases.

Personally, I used to know it was really Christmas when my mama set out on her annual quest for the newest Hess truck. First she gave them to me and then to her grandsons. I don’t know how the custom got started because we didn’t live anywhere near a Hess station. But as soon as lights began showing up on people’s houses and Santa started sliding down those hills on TV on his Norelco shaver, Mama would start planning a trip to Athens or “Snellsville” — she always gave it an extra “s” — to make her purchase. I treasure the Hess trucks stored away in my attic. I wonder if Hess still sells trucks — or gasoline, for that matter.

From a friend — “When my house starts smelling like Granny’s house used to.” I could relate to that, because my kids’ granny’s house used to smell really good at Christmas. I haven’t seen my youngest child, Jenna, in her red apron with flour all over her face or smelled cookies baking in the oven yet, so we must have a ways to go.

I liked the comment from another friend– “When my kids start behaving well without being threatened.” I remember — and miss — those days.

A childhood friend said that she knew it was Christmas when the star on the Porterdale water tower could be seen from all over town. I haven’t made the pilgrimage to see it yet, but I heard from a reliable source that the star is gleaming bright as ever this year.
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“I know it’s Christmas when I have more things to do than there are hours in the day to get them done.” I think that person needs to sit down with a glass of fresh eggnog and relax for a few minutes.

“I know it’s Christmas when my mother and father start arguing over whether the tree will be real or fake this year and whether the lights will be all white or various colors.” No question at our house. For the 30th year we put up an enormous real tree and decorated it with hundreds of colored lights. Color me old-fashioned, especially at Christmas.

“I know it is Christmas when Patrick’s puts the “Candy is Here” sign on the front of the store.” Hear! Hear!

“Christmas is really here when my husband starts leaving catalogues from Bass Pro Shop all over the house, with certain pages dog-eared and certain items underlined.” I’m glad some husbands have mastered skill of the not-so-subtle. I have tried and failed. I still get underwear and socks for Christmas, and no matter how many pairs of panty hose I hang by the chimney with care, Santa never fills them.

“It is never Christmas to me until I get teary-eyed from watching an old black-and-white movie and heard the preacher read the scriptures from the second chapter of Luke.” That person and I speak the same language.

“It is never Christmas to me until I have the whole family gathered under one roof for the reading of the story of the first Nativity and The Night Before Christmas.” I think that friend has been peeking at our house on Christmas Eve night.

For me, personally, it isn’t Christmas until I feel that perfect peace flow over me that reminds me that the greatest Christmas gift was the one given 2,000 years ago. It’s almost time, y’all. Hope your final days of the journey are merry and bright.

After spending every waking minute following the news and its nuances from April through the conclusion of the election season, I was sick and tired of reading the news — especially when most of what I had read seemed to hold little resemblance to my daily observations. So I began, throughout November, taking just a quick glance at the world, local and national news and spending most of my newspaper time with the comics and the sports pages.

As December crept in, however, I began to take longer and longer and longer peeks at the paper each morning and this week, during a two-hour flight to Houston, which was turned into three because of weather delays, I dove back into the deep water and caught up with the wars and rumors of war in the Middle East and the so-called “fiscal cliff” that our nation’s economy seems to be heading toward at breakneck speed.

I would have done better to stick to the funny papers.

I wonder who coined the term “fiscal cliff” to begin with? Mark Bradley claims to have been the first to call Steve Spurrier the “Evil Genius,” and I am absolutely certain that I was the first person to combine Todd Gurley and Keith Marshall’s names into “Gurshall” in print, but I don’t know where the term fiscal cliff originated. It probably came from the same person that guaranteed me a Romney landslide.

All I know is that neither party really seems to want to do a whole lot about solving our financial woes. If they did, something would have been done by now. Where’s Henry Clay when you need a good compromise brokered? I know this, though: Nothing good ever came of going over a cliff.

Think about that for a moment or two. Remember the old serial westerns? The posse would be riding full tilt after the bad guys, who would be stirring up such a cloud of dust that the chasers couldn’t see a foot in front of their faces. Then the ones in the black hats would turn down a blind canyon, leading the posse headed right toward a cliff — and then you’d have to come back the next Saturday to find out if they stopped in time.

What we are going through right now isn’t much different than that, really. There’s a huge cloud of dust being kicked up — along with something else those old cowpokes had to shovel a right smart amount of — but the folks who are going to be hurt if this particular cliff is not avoidable are Mr. and Mrs. Everyman, the American taxpayers.

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I’ll tell you another place you used to see cliffs — the Roadrunner cartoons. Beep, beep!

Wile E. Coyote would always be chasing the roadrunner across the New Mexico desert and then the roadrunner would just scoot off the end of a cliff — but always come up with a parachute or some way to break the fall, and the coyote would always run on air for a few feet, then realize there was nothing supporting him and crash to the ground.

That’s exactly, I am afraid, what we are about to experience. We are going to run willy-nilly into 2013 and then look down and realize that we haven’t been on sound economic support for a long, long time. Just like Wile E. Coyote, we are going to wind up in a heap at the bottom of a very high and rocky ledge. The fall won’t hurt us but the landing is going to be a booger bear, I’m afraid.

One of the papers I read on my flight to Texas said that the schools would be one of the institutions to suffer the most. Give me a break! Do people realize how much educational spending has already been cut? Some counties are already down to 160 days instead of 180 — and I don’t care if you do add a few minutes to each class to make the instructional time work out mathematically — you cannot teach a child as much in 160 days as you can in 180. It might work in theory, but kids don’t go to class in theory, they go in schools that are being shafted already.

The taxpayers cannot afford an elimination of the Bush tax cuts, either. Most folks don’t take home enough now and there are more and more people that the taxpayers have to support these days. Unless we all want to wind up at the bottom of some canyon, Congress had better decide to act like grown men and women and quit pretending that they are watching cartoons and western serials.

Just remember, that cliff looked like fun to Thelma and Louise at the time, but we didn’t see anything else of Thelma or Louise.

There are very few Southern icons still around. Bear Bryant has been dead for decades. Elvis, a decade longer. Willie Nelson is still kicking, but not as high anymore, and there are few people who even remember Minnie Pearl.

But one Southern treasure is still with us. I am speaking of the Rev. Billy Graham, a child of the pre-Depression North Carolina Bible Belt, who has probably touched more lives across this nation and around the world than any evangelist of the past 100 years.

The televised Billy Graham Crusades were a big deal at our house when I was a kid. My mama, and all the grown-ups I knew, would get really excited. Me, not so much, of course, because it seemed to me, as a child, that when they rolled around they aired every night for a whole week and always aired when I wanted to watch Red Skelton or Andy Griffith.

But when the crusades came on, I watched, along with my mama and the ladies who lived on our street. And even though I couldn’t understand the context of all that was going on, I was mesmerized by the great preacher’s penetrating eyes and long wavy hair. He looked like what I imagined the Old Testament prophets to look like, if the Old Testament prophets wore dark suits and silk neckties, of course.

I liked the way he used his hands in the pulpit. Sometimes he even pounded his Bible to make a point and I didn’t always understand what he was saying, but I was absolutely convinced that his message was coming in on a direct line from the Almighty. Fifty-five years, later I still am.

I am a huge admirer of Billy Graham. I realize that he is not infallible. He is a man, just like me — only more so, to quote Rick Blaine, which I bet no one else has ever done while speaking of Dr. Graham. But I have listened to Dr. Graham’s sermons, read his books and studied his life for a long, long time and I think he has come as close to getting evangelism right as anyone has ever come in my lifetime.

I was reading about the early days of his ministry a while back and was impressed with his devoutness and the great lengths to which he went to avoid any appearance of impropriety. I read that after a particular service, in Atlanta I believe — maybe even at the old Ponce de Leon Park — a photograph had appeared in the paper of Graham with the evening offering. It made him look like, or so he thought, like he was preaching for the money. After that he appointed a financial minister to his ministry and never personally touched another dollar except for his paycheck.
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I also read that he was so concerned about the appearance of sexual impropriety that he never allowed himself to be anywhere alone with a woman who was not his wife, even to the point of stepping off an elevator car, if need be, and waiting on another. I don’t know if that is true, but it is what I read.

None of this is what impressed me the most about Billy Graham, however. Long after I was forced to sit and listen to his sermons because it was just the thing to do at my house, I learned to love to listen to his sermons because they rang so true and made so much sense and spoke, so much, to my heart. He always preached right out of the pages of Scripture, but still could make a verse from 3,500 years ago seem perfectly relevant to the lifestyles of the 21st century — with good reason, of course. They are.

Billy doesn’t get out much anymore, of course, but his Classic Crusades are still shown on television and I watch them several times a week. I still love hearing George Beverly Shea singing gospel songs and I still enjoy seeing those in attendance walk down from their seats far from the pulpit and come to kneel at the altar and give their lives to Christ as the hymn of invitation, “Just As I Am,” is played. I often wonder how those people’s lives, who made such very public professions of faith, on national television, were changed.

Honesty compels me to admit that I enjoy seeing the hairstyles and fashions from the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, too, and often think, “Did we really look and dress like that?” knowing, of course, that we really did.

But most of all, I still enjoy hearing the messages of inspiration and hope, given with confidence and assurance and rooted deeply in the Word of God — messages that even an old linthead educated in a public Southern university can understand, live by, and hang his chance at eternity on.

God bless you, Billy Graham, and thank you for your service. I’m glad that we in the American South can claim you as our own.

I haven’t watched many television commercials since the remote control was invented. I already have a wife to tell me what to buy, what to wear and what to think, so why bother exposing myself to the influences of Madison Avenue when I might be able catch a couple of minutes of “Duck Dynasty?”

Besides, the commercials have gotten too embarrassing to watch in mixed company. I remember when all that stuff started. Lewis Grizzard once remarked, “I’ll be so happy when Cathy Rigby reaches menopause I won’t know what to do.” Well, I saw her playing Peter Pan at the Fox last summer — yes, still — and I’d say the old girl is probably pretty close. She ain’t flying as high as she once was.

But back to current commercials. I don’t watch them — usually. I was forced to endure a dozen or so the other night, however, because one of my children came home for an hour and left the remote at a location known only to her and God.

To my amazement, I ran across an ad that I really liked. It’s the one for the Georgia Lottery, which I will never win because you have to buy a ticket to have a chance. The commercial features a group of folks sitting around exchanging hideous and absolutely useless Christmas gifts, the point being, I suppose, that lottery tickets would have been a better choice. The ad makes me laugh because, like most humor, it is rooted deeply in truth. We have all been on both ends of the Christmas gift conundrum.

Should I give a certain person a gift, or no? If yes, what would be an appropriate gift? What if I don’t purchase a person a gift and they give me one? Or what if my gift is more expensive than theirs — or less? And we all have opened a present and had to plaster a smile on our face while wondering, “What is this?” or, more often, “What about me makes you think I would ever in a million years use/wear/need/want this particular item?”

I know! I know! It’s the thought that counts and we honor the true meaning of Christmas by showing appreciation for anything another person gives us and yada, yada, yada … But let’s be honest, y’all. Some gifts just suck. If it really is the thought that counts, it is obvious that the bearer of certain gifts hasn’t put any into the purchasing of said gift.

In the Georgia Lottery commercial, recipients don’t even pretend to like what they have received. They are making comments like, “How awful; I’ll be sure to pretend to leave this here accidently when I go home,” or “What an ugly sweater. You must think I am still fat!” But they make the comments in a happy, jovial tone, and no one’s feelings get hurt. I guess you have to see it. It’s a funny ad, though.
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Now I told you all that to tell you this. The commercial started me thinking about the worst gifts I have ever given, or received, at Christmastime. My face turned the reddest when I recalled some of the tacky costume jewelry I gave some of my old girlfriends back in my high school days. In college, I was astute enough to break up just before fall semester ended, thus escaping the humiliation of having to pick out an appropriate present. Not so in high school. I know a few girls whose necks and arms turned lime green because they weren’t willing to hurt my feelings by not wearing my yuletide offerings.

I did better once I started dating my lovely wife, Lisa, however. On our first Christmas as a couple I gave her tickets to see “Annie” at the Fox. Cathy Rigby was not part of the production, by the way. That gift was a big hit. The first three years we were married I gave her lingerie that I liked a lot and she liked not in the least. I knew that reality had set in the fourth year of marriage when she took the electric blue teddy back to Rich’s and traded it for a new steam iron.

I have been on the other end of the deal, however. Three straight years, in high school, my girlfriend gave me a Sports Illustrated subscription for Christmas — or said she did. Not a single issue ever arrived at my house. She was a smart girl. She eventually graduated from Georgia Tech and moved to Hollywood and became an actress. She had practiced by acting like she had bought me Christmas presents.

Anyway, I like the commercial and, who knows — I might just buy up a bunch of lottery tickets to give my friends this year. Maybe I’ll even get a ticket myself and win a million dollars. I’ll give 10 percent to my church, spend 80 percent on wine, women and song — and then I’ll probably just blow the rest.

Or maybe I’ll just pay off my bills — as far as it goes.

Happy shopping, y’all.

A few years ago — well, I suppose it was more than a few years ago, now — a lady called into the late Ludlow Porch’s radio show inquiring as to the value of a piece of furniture in her house. “Daddy always told me he got it before the war,” the lady explained. “I thought it might be valuable.

“Which war was that, sugar?” Ludlow, always the gentleman, asked.

The lady on the other end of the line acted as if that were the silliest question she’d ever been asked.

“Why,” she explained, indignantly, “the one where we fought the Yankees.”

The War. Of course. When I was growing up in the 1950s and ’60s, the century-old wounds were still fresh. In the American South, we referenced time against it.

I was only two years into my formal education when America began commemorating the centennial of The War. Don’t call it the Civil War. There was nothing civil about it. It was more a test of whether the states of the Union were sovereign. In the minds of the Southerners they were simply following the advice of Thomas Jefferson who wrote in the Declaration of Independence that — referring to the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — “governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Of course, the fact that the happiness and economic prosperity of the South were built on the foundation of slave labor made things very complicated — and let’s not forget that the North’s prosperity was just as dependent on that slave labor, for the Northeastern cotton mills were misusing Irish immigrants and turning cheap Southern cotton into an enormous profit.

I didn’t know any of that stuff when I was a kid. I just knew that I was a Rebel and my people had worn gray and butternut and fought for the South. My Christmas list, in those days, was laden with requests for War Between the States play sets from the Sears-Roebuck catalogue. One year, I got a Johnny Reb cannon and for my eighth birthday I got a complete Confederate uniform — just like the real Confederate soldiers did — and wore it until the material fell apart.
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I read “Gone with the Wind” for the first time when I was in the fourth grade. I incurred the wrath of my mother when I tacked a Rebel flag to her freshly painted Bibb ivory walls. A portrait of Robert E. Lee, a Christmas gift from Sam Ramsey in 1968, hung in a place of honor in our home. In 1989, I named my only son Jackson Lee — after THAT Jackson and THAT Lee.

Over the years I have come to study The War with a more open mind and while I have lost no respect for my brave Southern ancestors, I have learned that the “other side” had their own reasons for fighting. I have also learned that Abraham Lincoln, through sheer force of will, was determined to save the Union. The abolition of slavery was not his motivation. Preserving the Union was. He said many times, “If I could save the Union by freeing all the slaves, I would do that; If I could save the Union without freeing a single slave, I would do that; If I could save the Union by freeing half the slaves and keeping the other half, I would do that. I mean, however, to save the Union.”

Our house, much to the dismay of my lovely wife, Lisa, resembles a history museum. Robert E. Lee still gazes down through sad eyes from our fireplace and there are fine prints and sculptures of Lee and Jackson and others throughout the house. That is my heritage. One print shows Lee and Jackson, shoulder to shoulder, in church — praying that God’s will be done over the nation.

That painting always makes me think, because I know that Abraham Lincoln and many of the Union generals spent a lot of time praying for victory to the same God. Like I said, it was very, very complicated.

I told you all that to tell you this. Next Thursday, Dec. 13, I will celebrate my return from my most recent visit to the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, by presenting my own personal take on the War Between the States. I will present “Two Nations; One God,” at 11:30 a.m. at Conyers First United Methodist Church. It will be worth hearing — for Northerners and Southerners, Yankees and Rebels and everyone in between, if I do say so myself.

Lunch will be served and books will be signed, regardless of political affiliation, but you’ll need a ticket. You can get one of those by calling 770-483-4236. Better hurry, though. Space is limited.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, we will delve into the most complicated era in the history of this great God-fearing nation.

“Go tell it; Jesus is born!”

I have been waiting 11 months to be able to sing those lines without feeling guilty about rushing the season. Why do we have to wait for the season of advent to sing joyous songs about the birth of Christ? The good news of God’s gift to the world is significant 365 days a year, after all.

My next-door neighbor growing up was Miss Mae Hardman, who left Porterdale to teach at Rabun Gap Nacoochie School the year after I left to go to college. She still lives in those North Georgia Mountains around Clayton. Miss Mae’s favorite hymn, no matter what the time of year, was “Joy to the World,” and she often complained to me that the folks at the Presbyterians wouldn’t acquiesce to her wishes and sing it year round.

I tried to get her to go with me to the Methodist Church by telling her that we sang it every week, but she knew better.

Well, I love Christmas music, both sacred and secular, and I look forward all year to the moment when the person on WSB hits the high note of Amazing Grace and the “Rich’s Great Tree,” which is now sponsored by Macy’s, at Lenox Square, bursts into light. That is the signal, at our house, to let the Christmas music begin.

I will admit here and now that I am a sucker for buying Christmas albums — although they are called CDs now and even they are about to become obsolete, or so I am told. You let a company produce a new album with a compilation of my favorite songs by my favorite artists and I will buy that sucker, with little regard to how much it costs — even though I have all the songs by all the artists on other discs. I know, I know. It’s just a thing.

My favorite Christmas album, and my favorite song, differs from day to day and year to year. Willie Nelson is a perennial favorite, though. I can close my eyes and just picture Willie sitting by a fireplace all alone, the rest of the room dark, or maybe illuminated by candlelight, playing his battered guitar and singing “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” It puts me in a melancholy mood every time. My favorite cut is “Pretty Paper,” which is also the name of the album.

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That always puts me to mind of Elvis, of course, and I am digging through the stack of CDs looking for something that has “Blue Christmas” on it.

When I was a kid we didn’t have many records, but we did have a Bing Crosby Christmas LP and I have it on disc and make sure it gets plenty of play time this time of year. I even have a scratchy old copy of the Ames Brothers’ “There’ll Always be a Christmas,” that my favorite converted Southerner, Danna Gutknecht, gave me several years ago. I’ve already played it a couple of times this season.

I like playing my personal recordings better than I like listening to the all-Christmas-all-the-time stations. When you listen to those, you hear songs that will drive you crazy after the first two or three days of advent. Let me give you a for-instance of three. I don’t care if I never hear another recording of Burl Ives singing “Holly Jolly Christmas.” I know. I know. It is a classic. It was fine the first four or five thousand times I heard it, but I am over it now. Ditto those stupid dogs barking “Jingle Bells,” and I don’t want to hear about your grandma getting run over by a reindeer, either. As a matter of fact, “Deck the Halls,” has lost a little of its luster, too, although I will still find myself breaking into it every now and then, particularly while I am decorating the staircase and doorways of our house with greenery.

I do opt for the radio dial every once in awhile, hoping to hear one or two of the songs that I don’t have recordings of — like the Ray Stevens version of the Ahab the Arab Christmas song. That’s the one where Clyde the Camel pulls Rudolph’s sleigh. We probably won’t hear that one this year. Politically incorrect, don’t you know.

As the season progresses, I will move away from “Silver Bells” and “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot like Christmas” toward “The First Noel,” “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” and Miss Mae’s favorite, “Joy to the World.” As Christmas Eve approaches there will be more “Silent Night” and “O Holy Night” renditions on my personal airwaves.

I love this time of year, y’all. It’s Christmas in Dixie. I like that song, too — even if the group that does it is called Alabama.

I can’t help but laugh at the commercials the big box department stores have been running lately, the ones encouraging everybody to “winterize” their houses. Yep, winter is on the way and we’ve had some right chilly mornings already, but I don’t think there are that many folks around who actually remember how uncomfortable a cold North Georgia winter can be.

I ran into a couple of my cousins the other day and we began reminiscing about the good old days and somehow winter came up. I have a lot of precious memories of growing up in Porterdale. Winter isn’t really one of them — not for the most part.

Oh, there was the occasional surprise snow storm — yes, every once in a while something would slip by old Guy Sharpe — but other than that, winter never was my favorite time of year.

Let me paint you a picture of the little mill village house in which I was raised. It had four rooms. In fact, it was a perfect square. There were two doors in each room. If you entered through the front door, which few people did, you walked into the living room. There was a couch against the near wall, my daddy’s recliner was against the wall on the left and there was a television, eventually, in the corner.

If you walked through that room you would enter the kitchen, where most of the entertaining was done. There was a sink on the far wall, a table in the middle of the room, and a cupboard in the near corner. The two rooms on the left side of the house were bedrooms. The back bedroom was my parents’ and had a double bed, a chifferobe and a chest of drawers. All of the family’s clothes — all of the family’s clothes — were kept in that one chifferobe and chest of drawers.

My sister and I shared the front bedroom. We had twin beds that Mama bought used from her first-grade school teacher, Sybil Ellington — who would also be my sister’s first-grade school teacher. We had our own chest of drawers, eventually, but we didn’t have enough clothes to fill it up.

The bathroom? It was on the back porch — eventually — and that was an upgrade.
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We didn’t have carpets on our floors. We did have a linoleum rug on our kitchen floor. The rest of the house was bare wood. There were no lamps. A bare light bulb hung down from the center of each room, with a string to pull to turn the light on. In the living room there was a gas heater which was supposed to keep the living room and kitchen warm. We kept the doors to the bedrooms closed, which didn’t matter because Daddy turned off the heater at bedtime anyway. The house was a bit drafty — it was up on brick pillars with no underpinning — so the wind blew underneath it, and he lived in fear that the pilot light would blow out, filling the house with noxious gas.

How did we keep warm? Quilts, of course. We would bury ourselves under four or five or six home-made quilts. Nowadays folks sell such quilts for a couple thousand dollars apiece. We used them for cover and took them on picnics and to the drive-in and lay on them to work under the car. You get tucked in under four or five of those heavy quilts and you weren’t going anywhere. On really cold nights Mama would heat bricks on the stove and wrap them in towels and put them next to our feet when she tucked us in.

You didn’t dare drink anything close to bedtime because answering nature’s call meant one of two things. Walking across ice cold bare floors and going outside to the bathroom or using the “pee pot” under the bed. Neither was a very viable option. You could freeze walking across those floors and going outside — if you could even lift the quilts enough to get out of bed — and the last person to use the pot had to empty it the next morning. That was never a pleasant task.

When we finally did wake up, we would get dressed in a hurry — let me tell you — and then stand by the newly lit heater trying desperately to get warm. Then it was time to put on our sweater and our jacket and our gloves and our caps and get ready to walk to school. There is no colder place on earth than the Yellow River Bridge at 7:30 in the morning on a cold January day.

When the weather was really cold, which it often was, we would have to leave the water dripping in the sink to try and prevent the water from freezing, which it often did, even though Daddy “wrapped” the pipes with newspapers at the first sign of cold weather. At least once or twice a winter the pipes would freeze and burst and we would be without water until it was our turn for Oscar Harold Jackson, the Bibb plumber, to come to our house and fix the pipes.

Yeah. I remember winter — and I am so very thankful for a thermostat that stays on 70, warm carpet on my floors and a bathroom that is about 12 feet away from my bed. Come ahead Old Man Winter. We are ready for you at my house.

I like the rain. My mama didn’t. She was as afraid of a bad cloud as anybody I ever knew. Not me. I enjoy the rain — and the stormier the better, as long as I am not in harm’s way.

Sometimes we know the rain is coming. In fact, nowadays, with tweets and texts and auto-alerts and 24-hour cable news and, of course, the WSB weather team, we usually know when and where the storms are going to hit long before they actually happen. That’s good for practical purposes, but sometimes I long for the old days when a sudden summer storm would come up out of nowhere.

I will never forget that camp meeting Sunday in 1981 when my lovely wife, Lisa, and I got caught in a sudden summer storm at the spring at Salem Campground. We were drenched. We were soaked to the skin, as they say, and had a delightful time getting all dried out.

I was staying in an old sharecropper’s cabin on the Mississippi Delta once and watched storm clouds gather across unplowed cotton fields that were miles and miles away. I could tell that the storm was going to make a beeline right toward me. It did. I could smell the rain as it moved right across those black fields and ran for shelter just as the heavy drops of water began hitting the ancient tin roof of that old cabin. It was like music to my ears as I lay on the small iron bed, and I could imagine what the previous occupants of the cabin must have thought as they sought shelter from the storms of their life in that same humble dwelling.

When I used to work at Bert Adams Scout Reservation, in a previous life, we had a little campfire skit that we would do from time to time. We would “create” a rainstorm. Everyone would close their eyes and start beating their index fingers together, all at the same time. Three hundred index fingers being pounded together at the same time sounds a lot like the pitter-patter of raindrops just beginning to fall. Then we would do two fingers and then three and four and so forth until the group sounded like a pounding storm.

Then we would make the storm abate by going back down to four fingers and then three and two and so forth. I guess you had to be there to get the full experience, but the next time you have 300 or so Boy Scouts hanging around, give it a try.

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One of the reasons that I like rain so much, and rainstorms in particular — other than the obvious reason that it makes things grow and washes out the atmosphere — is because it reminds me of the power of the Almighty. I am reminded by the thunder and lightning and wind and rain that no matter how much I might like to pretend that I am in control of my own destiny, there is a power much greater than me that is really in charge.

When I was a younger man I would go outside and dance in the rain. If I were hiking through the woods and a storm came up I would keep on hiking. I would laugh at the thunder and dare the lightning bolts to hit me. Now I am older and a bit wiser and have put away the foolish things of childhood. Now I am at least smart enough to come in out of the rain and to seek shelter from the storms of life.

But I still hang on to this simple truth — and it is one that I have shared often with my family and friends. Every time I have ever gotten wet — each and every time — I have gotten dry again eventually. As a matter of fact, I am dry as a bone, right this minute.

I don’t know what storms might be beseeching you right now, but I know where you can find shelter and I know that no matter how hard it might be raining at the moment that, eventually, the rain will stop, the clouds will roll away and the sun will come out — and no matter how wet you might have gotten, you will eventually get dry again.

I like the rain.