Hello Friends and Neighbors.

How are you all doing these pretty fall days?

Today is September 9th and I'll get started on thiscolumn now and I may be writing this time next week on this same one.

We hope you are enjoying life and feeling good too.

I have had a lot of sadness lately and sure do hopethings will get better, don't you? I have a birthday coming on this month andI'm glad that the good Lord has let me stay around here this long.

First off, let's thank the good Lord for our rain todayand early morning at 3:00 a.m. and a bad thundering and lightning storm thisevening. We are supposed to get lots of rain all this week off the hurricanes.We need lots of rain for our waterways, creeks, branches, wells and springs.

Senior Saints, a Senior Citizen's Lament

Thought I'd let my doctor check me, cause I didn't feelquite right.

All those aches and pains annoyed me and I couldn't sleepat night.

He could find no real disorder, but he wouldn't let itrest.

What with Medicare and Blue Cross, it wouldn't hurt to dosome tests.

To the hospital he sent me, though I didn't feel thatbad.

He arranged for them to give me every test they had.

I was fluoroscoped and cystoscoped, my aging framedisplayed.

Stripped upon an ice cold table while my gizzards werex-rayed.

I was checked for worms and parasites, for fungus and thecrud,

While they pierced me with long needles, taking samplesof my blood.

Doctors came to check me over, probed and pushed me forsound.

(They finally concluded their results filled a page)

What I have will someday kill me; my affliction is oldage!

I just wonder how many of us fit that bill!

We have more families to send sympathy their way. Mr.Author Smith of Del Rio, a well known fellow in our area around here, passedaway last week. I never met him but Charlie has and he has relatives in ourcommunity and we attend church with some of them too. Our prayers are with theSmith family.

This weekend we learned of the passing of Tom Hayes ofParrottsville. Back in the early seventies he and Charlie worked together inNewport and always remained good friends. Our love and sympathy to his family.

Monday, September 14, Mrs. Ila Lee (Duckett) Hodge passedaway in a nursing home in Waldors, Maryland. She was seventy-four years old.Her husband preceded her in death and was buried with him up there and theyleave behind a daughter. She was one of ten children of Mr. and Mrs. DockDuckett here above our house next to the Gulf. There are four of the tenchildren left, my friend Viola Duckett Miller of Knoxville. Our love andsympathy to Viola and her family.

Our birthdays for the last two weeks of September:

16th - our friend Betty Murrah from Knoxville

17th - Jennifer Greene of Newport, Kathryn Gregg ofRankin and Anthony Hill of Grassy Fork

20th - Nikki Echebacher of Rankin and Michel Thompson ofNewport

21st - Amy Barnes of Kentucky, our nephew Tommy Barnes,our park ranger's wife and a cousin, Betty Lou (Ball) Ellis of Newport

23rd - another cousin, Donald Hall, a neighbor too herebelow us on Big Creek

24th - Guess Who? And Chris McFalls

25th - Johnny Green of Cosby

26th - our niece Mrs. Donnie (Betty Faye Rathbone) Rainesof Newport and our one and only great-granddaughter Madison Adeline Oma Jones,who will be one year old, also our friend Bill Barnes of Cosby

27th - our great niece Hannah Laws over on English Creekin the Cosby section and our friend, Mr. Oran Harrick, over at White Pine

28th - a very good friend, Mrs. Carolyn Thigpen, atBogard in Cosby

We hope each of you has a very happy day.

We want to send get well greetings to some sick folks. Myfriend, Viola (Duckett) Miller of Knoxville had breast cancer surgery onTuesday, September 16, for the second time this month. The doctors say they gotit all but want her to have several radiation treatments and we do hope allwill help me to remember her in our prayers. She had her one-day surgery at St.Mary[s Hospital in Powell. Another friend, Vickie Hill, is in very seriouscondition at a hospital in Morristown. We do hope she has gotten some better bynow and maybe released to go home. My cousin, Mitchell Pullman, of RavensBranch, had a knee replacement back in August and had Smoky Mountain HomeHealth for a while after her stay at Rehab in Morristown. She is now takingtherapy at The Family Practice Center in Newport. We hope she is greatlyimproved by now.

This week, September 16, marks a whole year since I hadmy staff infection and had to have my left knee replacement removed and afiller put in until December 11 when I got my third knee replacement. I stayedat Newport Sunday and Monday, was transferred to Baptist West in Knoxville. Thelast of the month I was brought back to Newport Health and Rehab where I stayeduntil October 11. After twenty-six days I made it back home, thanks to the goodLord of course. I've had a pretty rough year but it could have been worse and Iam just thankful to be around and do a little housework and cooking, go tochurch and just everyday jobs a housewife has to do. There is always someonewho is worse off than we are and I've found that to be true. Oh yea! This hobbyof mine, writing this, brings joy to some folks I'm told and I enjoy doing ittoo.

My sister, Vivian, has to go Monday, the 22nd, to theKnoxville Orthopedic Center. She has been through a lot in her 60-some yearsand I hope you will join in with me saying a prayer for her too.

Old Age Isn't for Sissies

Old age ain't for sissies, it's only for the tough.

What doesn't hurt, doesn't work, gray hair and all thatstuff.

Your cupboard fills with little pills, any easy chair isyour friend.

And you feel like you have been up all night but got inat ten.

So hang in there, Old Timer, and remember this is true,

You have lots of friend who are old timers too.

Beatitudes for Friends of the Aged

Blessed are they who understand my faltering steps andpalsied hand.

Blessed are they who know that my ears must strain todayto catch things they say.

Blessed are they who looked away when coffee spilled attable today.

Blessed are they with cheery smiles who stop to chat alittle while.

Blessed are they who never say "you've told thattwice today".

Blessed are they who know ways to bring back memories ofyesterday.

Blessed are they who make it known that I'm loved,respected and not alone.

Blessed are they who know I'm at a loss to find strengthto carry my cross.

Blessed are they who ease the days on my journey home.

Thank you, Cora Mae Kelly, for the nice birthday card andpretty poems.

Saturday, September 27, a big birthday party at our GrassyFork Community Room for our great-granddaughter, Madison Jones, who will be oneyear old, and myself who will be one year older. Everyone is invited to comeand bring a covered dish. We hope to eat about two o'clock. So you all come,OK?

Saturday night, October 4, our second monthly singing atour New Prospect Baptist Church at 7:00 p.m. We do invite all who like to singto come join us and all of you who like to hear good singing.

The middle of October the Big Creek Union Sunday SchoolConvention will be going on for a whole weekend and this year it's at the JonesChapel Methodist Church in Del Rio. We are really looking forward to this yearsince I missed last year for the first time in nine years. I had just gottenhome from the rehab center. So if it's our good Lord's will, I'll be there andhope you are too. God bless us all.