27 Aug 2023 5:03 am
As my poor old widowed teetotaler mother lay dying of congestive heart failure at age 84, she just naturally spent a lot of hours planning for her own funeral upon her impending demise.
She picked her pall bearers, and outlived one, picked another and outlived him, and wound up with three grandsons and three men and two alternates.
The preacher she designated was an old man she’d whipped her first day at Royal School as a 17 year old teacher in 1943 when he was 14. He survived her and was magnificent, telling the story of Mama walking across plowed ground applying for her first position as a teacher during the Second World War, but she had another back up for that old man, should he have croaked ahead of her.
As for the music the obligatory Old Rugged Cross was selected, to be sung by the music teacher house renter of our home place, named Barbara. But for the special guest number she honored me and my friend David and wanted me to sing Charlie’s Picture with David playing lead guitar and doing background harmony on the chorus.
I said Mama that’s a Porter Wagoner song, intended to be played in a beer joint on a juke box and she said I know it, but if it saves just one soul there from becoming an alcoholic it’s worth it all, isn’t it?
She had me and David audition and decided that without an electric banjo it wasn’t suitable, so she had Barbara sing Tramp on the Street, always a safe choice.
Mama is rolling over in her grave tonight knowing the United States Department of Agriculture recommends a two beer a night limit for the men and one for the mothers that should not be at beer joints at all, but rather at home raising children. And she’d make some snide remark about how she hoped Joe Biden outran all those priests as an altar boy, and that Jill wasn’t on the job letting him recommend any beer at all for women ever and no more than a half a beer at deer camp for the men, for sacramental purposes.
And even a half a beer a year was dangerous, although I should risk it to make Russel Madison and Tommy feel comfortable, you know?
They could drink beer at her grave, for all the help they gave us after Daddy died.
Here’s to you Mama, and what we might have sang.
https://youtu.be/f-3Vm1K_mkQ?si=zjoGBxoO0QOUuB9P
Most good Christian ladies never have one beer a lifetime.
She picked her pall bearers, and outlived one, picked another and outlived him, and wound up with three grandsons and three men and two alternates.
The preacher she designated was an old man she’d whipped her first day at Royal School as a 17 year old teacher in 1943 when he was 14. He survived her and was magnificent, telling the story of Mama walking across plowed ground applying for her first position as a teacher during the Second World War, but she had another back up for that old man, should he have croaked ahead of her.
As for the music the obligatory Old Rugged Cross was selected, to be sung by the music teacher house renter of our home place, named Barbara. But for the special guest number she honored me and my friend David and wanted me to sing Charlie’s Picture with David playing lead guitar and doing background harmony on the chorus.
I said Mama that’s a Porter Wagoner song, intended to be played in a beer joint on a juke box and she said I know it, but if it saves just one soul there from becoming an alcoholic it’s worth it all, isn’t it?
She had me and David audition and decided that without an electric banjo it wasn’t suitable, so she had Barbara sing Tramp on the Street, always a safe choice.
Mama is rolling over in her grave tonight knowing the United States Department of Agriculture recommends a two beer a night limit for the men and one for the mothers that should not be at beer joints at all, but rather at home raising children. And she’d make some snide remark about how she hoped Joe Biden outran all those priests as an altar boy, and that Jill wasn’t on the job letting him recommend any beer at all for women ever and no more than a half a beer at deer camp for the men, for sacramental purposes.
And even a half a beer a year was dangerous, although I should risk it to make Russel Madison and Tommy feel comfortable, you know?
They could drink beer at her grave, for all the help they gave us after Daddy died.
Here’s to you Mama, and what we might have sang.
https://youtu.be/f-3Vm1K_mkQ?si=zjoGBxoO0QOUuB9P
Most good Christian ladies never have one beer a lifetime.