As the title suggests, this story is about learning to swim for the first time. Learning to swim is a very important life skill. Swimming is fun and refreshing, but water can be dangerous if you are not careful and don’t know your limits. It’s not really safe to swim by yourself even if you are an accomplished swimmer. My Mom had a bad experience back in...
Read MoreThe Lord’s creations never cease to amaze me, especially in the spring. One night last week, I heard the lonesome sound of a whip-poor-will off in the distance while frogs croaked all through the swamps. The springtime brings back beautiful birds like bluebirds, finches, and hummingbirds. Rabbits seem to move in pairs as the sound of carpenter and...
Read MoreWhen God threw Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden, He told them they would have to earn a living by the sweet of their brow from then on. Mankind has had to grow or raise its own food ever since. For generations, farmers and herdsmen all over the world have fed people and put clothes on their backs. Farming, and even religion, have played a major role...
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We continue our story about Ol’ Pap this week. It was on a winter day not long before Pap died that some of the local folks were sitting inside the old Derby store. The talk was about how cold it had been that year. Ol’ Pap spoke up and said, “This here cold snap, why, it ain’t nothing compared to how cold it used to get in Avery County. Maybe...
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One of my wife’s granddaddies, Pap, as his children used to call him, was raised a-top the Great Smokey Mountains in Avery County, North Carolina. Pap came up the hard way, as did most of the mountain people of his time. Ol’ Pap had come from good stock as his father lived to be a hundred and three and had walked six miles to town and back the day he died....
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