Sweet Music on Moonlight Ridge

Great-granddaddy W.T. Greenberry purely doted on possums. My great-grandmother, however, hated, abhorred, and despised possums, with their little beady eyes and their long old tails scraping around through the house. W.T. brought so many possums into the house that great-grandmother would open the back door and call Rich Man and Poor Man, the hunting dogs, into the house to chase the possums out, and they’d raise a ruckus all through the house, chasing possums up the draperies and under tables and up the bed posts. And Great-granddaddy W.T.? He’d grab anything he could find, a broom or a rifle or an umbrella, and go chasing the dogs and leaping over chairs and devonettes and yelling. “Run, possums, run! Run, little possums!” W.T. implored the scattering possums as he tore through the house in a state of mad panic. “Ye bastards! Ye cursed bastards! Great sons of bitches!” he bawled at the hounds, warping at the big old clumsy dogs, whacking them across their heads until they ran back out the door, whining and yelping. Then W.T. would yell out the back door, “Hounds from Hell! Murderous mongrels! Keep away from my marsupials!”

Happy 4th of July Birthday to My Dad

July 4, 1911

The Cornerstone: Gordy’s Poem

Written for My Father after His Death

"Then what is the meaning of that which is written:

The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone?”

Beneath the birding sky, cold-blue and safe,

bricks laid one to another, timeless bond and true,

by hands long learned and destined to this trade:

a world of walls and beauty, shelters made.

Unlost, unvanished, close beneath blue skies,

and yet somewhere a’wandered, biding still,

he built a hearth within our hearts held strong

in patterns made of mortar, brick, and song.

© Ramey Channell  

Childhood Is The One Story That Stands By Itself In Every Soul