July 14, 2004

Dear Jimmy,

You must want to break your poor old mama's heart!

I am so embarrassed since I ran into Ludeen Herlocker at the Piggly-Wiggly last week. She was buying some wine for a recipe and she said her oldest boy, Mavis, saw you and all them chicken hot rodders making music at some festival down at White Lake.

He allowed as how you all put on a good, clean show and was probably having more fun than you ought to, if you know what I mean.

Anyhow, he said you were selling records and telling people to go to your web sight just like you were somebody big. (Jimmy, I don't see how you can go somewhere on a computer, it must be like long distance or color TV or something)

So, when he got back home, he went to where ever you told them to go and there was my private letters from a mama to her son from me to you. They were up there on the screen for God and everybody to read.

And, to top it off, Mavis said he thought some of that stuff was pretty funny. What do you reckon he meant by that?

If your daddy were alive, it would be enough to make him turn over in his bed.

Well, I didn't want to be left behind the times on this computer business, so I went down to the library and told Doris about all this mess. She asked me if I wanted to get up on the web and I told her a regular chair would be fine.

She laughed a little bit and then, the next thing I know I was looking at your sight and there were pictures and music and that letter from Reverend Norman saying he wouldn't be there this year.

Well Jimmy, I could've told you that he wouldn't be there. He came by the house back in May with real good news.

He said that the governor had appointed him to be the new chaplain of the whole state prison in Raleigh and that he might be gone for a spell, probably 90 days.

I hugged him and told him how proud we all are of him (Jimmy, he hugs for an awful long time).

Well, after I got home from the library last week, I found some young folks on the porch who looked like those groupers that used to follow you all around when you were traveling all over the country playing at those colleges.

They asked me to sign a clipboard for a librarian party. I said I thought it was kind of them to give the librarians a party; they sure deserve it.

But the head woman (her face was all pinched up like she smelled something gone bad) said it was a political party and they were running somebody for president (a librarian, I reckon).

I asked her which librarian were they putting up, but it wasn't anybody from around here.

So I offered them some ice tea, but they went on down the street. Oh, well.

Not to get all sentimental, but it's summertime and I've been thinking in my mind about all the good times we had in those summers of years past. Like when you got your first banjo and I wouldn't let you come in the house during daylight for a week.

I feel bad about it now, but a teenage boy with a banjo is an awful burden for a mama.

Or that time when Mark was going to train the carps to do tricks and we had that mess with the pinking shears.

Oh, your mama does rattle on and on.

Jimmy, Reverend Norman is not the only one with good news. The church's musical chair squad won the associational championship this spring.

You know, they make everybody be real, real quiet during the finals, but we were all sitting on the edges of our chairs and when they won, I just had to jump up and holler out loud. They will advance to the state convention next month and then, who knows?

Well, I better put down the pen and go clean out that middle shed next to the smoke house. It ain't no telling what I'll find in there.

There's all them gallon jugs that the reverend said he wouldn't need for several months now that he got the call to Raleigh. He didn't say what he does with them; he just said to be careful with fire.

I might call up Pop on Pop's Swap and Shop and see if I could trade them on the radio.

Last night a woman was looking to swap a Korean pot-bellied pig for a tattoo!!! I thought she sounded like a rough person.

I thought I might want to see if I could get me another little fice dog to keep me company. I hated to get rid of little Hollyhock, but she went to sucking eggs, and everybody knows you can't keep an egg-sucking dog.

I had to call your Uncle Philemon to come take her away. He found her a nice home in town where she won't be tempted.

Anyway, tell everybody "Hey from mama" and remember that I love you more than I'll ever know.

Mama