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Last evening I had the privilege to view the tool collection of a friend of mine. I am not talking about Shopsmiths and digital saws. I am talking about tools from current times to way back. They are all kept in a garage. There are literally thousands of tools hanging in this man's garage. Many of them are not your average wrench.

I was shown wrenches for every purpose you could imagine. If there was a need to remove a nut a wrench was invented to accomplish the job. Everything from the forerunner of the Crescent (R) wrench to old time buggy wrenches were found hanging on…  ( Click for more )

You won't see them at first. You won't know that they have arrived until their familiar calls start to fill the air. And fill the air they will. They'll set up a cacaphanous din that will be heard for miles around. One of the most amazing biological wonders of all time is coming; Brood X - the seventeen year cicada.

The cicadas are an amazing breed of insect. Most insects reproduce very quickly and easily, live a short life and die. A common housefly will reproduce a thousand times compared to one cycle of life for the cicada. Even the elephant, a mammal, is a marvel of…  ( Click for more )

"The spider skillfully grasps with its hands, and it is in king's palaces." Proverbs 30:28 Let me add something to that verse. "The worms will find a way to escape the deluge and will visit your palace in the morning." Yes, you read that right. Worms. The wet weather activates them. They have to come out of their little worm runs because of the water. For whatever reason they seek out our kitchen floor and enter under the back door off the deck. Pretty much every morning after a rainy day we have the little beggars on our floor right near that door. …  ( Click for more )

Every now and then you realize that you have slipped up. Last night I sat with my son, Sean, in the upper arena of Rupp Arena in Lexington and watched my beloved Ohio State Buckeyes win their first round game of the NCAA National Basketball Tournament. At one point my emotions got the best of me and I put my hand on Sean's shoulder and told him, "Thank you, son. I love you." That was such a tremendous gift for a son to give his father. Then I remembered why I am such a fan of the Buckeyes. I had a father, too.

My dad was raised in the radio era. He used to listen to…  ( Click for more )

The weather has been absolutely beautiful here in the Blue Grass until just yesterday. Sunday, Monday and Tuesday were gorgeous days with temperatures more indicative of June rather than March. Even yesterday, with all its storms and rain, the temperatures were mild enough that I didn't bother to even wear a jacket to work. It was that warm. So what did I do when I wound up with most of Monday afternoon off? Yeppers. I hit the golf course. I stayed right in Georgetown and played the Cherry Blossom Golf Course.

Cherry Blossom is a well designed and manicured golf course…  ( Click for more )

Opening night. The glitter of the marquee. It could be a show on Broadway, a picture at the Cineplex, or a local restaurant just down the street from you. Opening nights are a big deal for a lot people. They just simply have to be there and be able to say that they were there. Opening nights are important also for other situations. Take the case of the opening night of Pauley Pavilion, the home of the University of California at Los Angeles Bruins basketball team. Yeah, you got it; UCLA.

Pauley Pavilion opened the night of December 1,1973. The legendary John Wooden was…  ( Click for more )

This past Sunday afternoon our church took an afternoon out. Twenty of us met at CiCi's. If you don't know what a CiCi's is, it is a buffet pizza place that is really inexpensive. We ate our fill. Some of us ate our fill and the fill of some of the people who were not able to be there. Of course that fulfilled one of the "Three F's" of Christianity; faith, fellowship and food. Following the food we went to the local bowling alley here in Georgetown to have some more fun (guess that's also an "F" of the church).

Bowling is classified as a sporting activity.…  ( Click for more )

Recently, a friend of mine sent me a story of a man whose wife continually pestered him to teach her how to play golf. He finally relented and took her to the course. The first hole was a par three of some 170 yards or so. The husband addressed the ball and then proceeded to hit a beautiful shot that came to rest about thirty feet from the cup. "Now you do the same thing I just did," he told his wife. His wife then hit an ugly snap hook that hit a tree on the left of the hole, ricocheted off a rock behind the green and then rolled straight into the cup. "So now…  ( Click for more )

Golfers are the masters of optimism. They seem willing to tough it out depite the weather. To prove that I need only to go back a couple of days to Wednesday. My day at The UPS Store ended at 1:00 and I was scheduled to meet my good friend Don Clark at the Longview Golf Course outside Georgetown for a round of golf. It was 64 in Lexington as I left the store and headed north to Georgetown. When I got to the West side of Georgetown there was a sign telling me that 460 West was closed a mile ahead. But that posed no problem. I simply turned North on 227 to Galloway Road and still…  ( Click for more )

Last night my wife and I spent zero time together once we got back from eating supper out. My wife had a couple of cakes to bake and she had to watch them closely. Was she baking for family members or close friends of the family? No. She was baking for a guy at work. My wife is employed by Jack Burford Chevrolet in Richmond, Kentucky. She is in her sixth year with them. A few years back she baked a cake for a fellow employee as just a special thing for what was, I believe, an important birthday. It caught on.

Now she has a list of the birthdays of all the employees with…  ( Click for more )

March Madness. No, that's not about people who love the music of John Philip Sousa. You know. March Madness!!! Dicky V, b-ball, hard picks, last second game winning baskets. Okay, it's the NCAA Basketball Tournament. People call it March Madness because it gets the blood boiling in the veins of college basketball enthusiasts all across the country. It used to get the blood boiling here in the Bluegrass for we University of Kentucky Wildcat fans. For many UK fans there is something else making their blood boil about basketball, but that's for another day.

For me, being…  ( Click for more )

New Orleans is still reeling in the aftermath of the deadly hurricane that assaulted her two years ago. The city's population is nowhere close to being what it was and many of its mainline businesses have not returned. Displaced homeowners have relocated to other areas of Louisiana or have moved completely out of state. The devastation that the city experienced was simply too much for many of its people. It is difficult to restart businesses in communities that don't exist anymore within a city.

Enterprise, Alabama lost some of its brightest hope for the future when a school…  ( Click for more )

It was one of those rounds of golf that was not all that bad. It just wasn't really good. Everything I hit was hit left with the exception of about three shots. I was scrambling for scores and not getting some of the ones that I thought I would, given my greenside positions. However I got lucky on a couple of holes and actually pitched in to save two pars. It's one of the three shots that I hit to the right that I want to talk about. They were ugly shots and left me scrambling to save bogies. Trouble was that they were shots where I was trying to correct my "left-itis." …  ( Click for more )

Every man needs a granddaughter. Last evening our twins were here for a few hours. My granddaughter, Grace, asked me to help her build a castle. For the better part of an hour we stacked cylindrical wooden blocks as high as we could to build her castle. I would stack one and then she would add one. When it came to the final one or two on the top of the precariously teetering stack, Grace would hand me the blocks and say, "Finish it, Pawpaw." I would finish and we would look at the completed castle for all of about two seconds. Then Grace would do something I consider…  ( Click for more )

If I may be so bold as to borrow from Yogi Berra, "Half of golf is ninety per cent mental." Back in 1976 when I first took up the game I talked to an old-timer who played regularly at the Running Fox Golf Course in Mansfield, Ohio. What he told me was something like, "Just remember that golf is not a sprint. It's a marathon. You have to be able to manage your mind for the whole round." I think that every golfer out there will agree with that statement. At the time I first heard it I didn't understand it. Now I do.

It is tough to keep your mind focused…  ( Click for more )

My daughter, Kara, and her husband, Vince, love dogs. No, I mean it, they really love dogs. My son-in-law especially. He becomes attached to dogs so very easily. Let's face it. There's something special about dogs that cats don't have. Walk in the door of a home where a cat lives and you probably won't know it, unless there's that odor. But walk in the door of a home with a dog and you know it immediately. Dogs are the welcome wagon of pets. Their owners rarely open the front door to a guest but what their dog isn't right there with them either saying, "Glad you're here,"…  ( Click for more )

There is an argument raging that has been steadily gaining fuel over the past few years. At question is the formerly accepted mantle of "Greatest Running Back of All Time." For more than forty years that title has rested firmly in the hands of Jim Brown. Brown was the son of a fourth generation slave family from Georgia. He was born and raised in the St. Simons Island community of coastal Georgia. After amazing people in high school with his athletic prowess in pretty much every sport, he matriculated to Syracuse University in upstate New York where he played both football…  ( Click for more )

We preachers are rarely asked to serve as pallbearers for funeral services. Probably the exceptions are when it comes to our families. The last time that I served as a pallbearer was for my Uncle Orlyn Kelly. Late in their lives he and my dad had gotten closer as brothers should. I had always been fairly close to my cousins and thought the world of Uncle Orlyn and Aunt Helen. I was privileged to be able to be at his bedside when he passed away and even more honored when I was included as one of his pallbearers. Such is a sacred trust handed out by a family to those whom they…  ( Click for more )

"From the bottom of the hill..."

That tag line used to be the lead in for a number of columns that I wrote when we lived in the little community of Waco, near Richmond, Kentucky. We lived on the top of the hill about a quater mile from the recognized hub of the community. That hub was the Waco Food Mart. Along with it's grocery store there was also a rather nice little restaurant. Every morning the local men would gather in there for breakfast and conversation. My neighbor on the hill suggested that I needed to become a part of that gathering, so I did. I never…  ( Click for more )

In the 1986 Masters, Jack Nicklaus sank a putt that served as a pivotal point in his victory. He said that he was able to see the line of the putt so plainly and rolled it at the perfect speed for it to go in. This past season, at Hoylake just outside Liverpool, England, Tiger Woods put on a performance for the ages as he won The British Open handily and hardly ever used his driver. Golf pundits were lauding his performance as perfect. Hmm. Perfectly putted ball, perfectly played tournament. Perfection.

Baseball and bowling both have their "perfect game." In baseball…  ( Click for more )

My office is a place where worlds collide. I spend many hours a week in my office studying, making phone calls and doing projects as well as writing my sermons to deliver each Sunday. So my office reflects the different areas of my life that are important to me to give me an environment that makes me comfortable enough that I am not distracted.

I love golf, which many of you who receive these weekly thoughts have figured out no doubt. I have some memorabilia in my office; two racks of logo golf balls from golf courses and some wall hangings. I also love lighthouses, which have…  ( Click for more )

Today is an interesting day for me. This morning at 6:00 a group of six men were supposed to meet at my house to prepare to leave for Florence, South Carolina, and a four day golf retreat. We had started with eight men going. One had to drop out due to work problems. Another chose to drop out for health reasons. Still we had six. But of those six, one starts a job today while another is fighting a herniated disk in his lower neck. A third was not sure he wanted to go if the one starting the job was not going.

Such is life. I had decided to take the first three days off…  ( Click for more )

Ever wonder where you fit in in the grand scheme of things? Whether or not your life means anything to anyone else? We have a marvelous lady in our congregation at the Minorsville Christian Church. She is the mother of one of our Senior Saints. And she has been wondering where she fits in. She asked that very question the other day. "Why am I still here, preacher?" She is 96.

I looked into the eyes of that dear sweet lady. Those eyes had seen much in their time; twenty presidents, two world wars, countless friends who have come and gone, as well as loved ones whose memories…  ( Click for more )

When I was six years old I noticed that there were other people who must have been a whole lot older than be just because they were all bigger. My parents kept telling me that I would grow bigger the older I got. Mom told me one time that I asked her, "Is Dad really old? He's so big." Dad was, to a six year old, huge. Now, he wouldn't have been very big at all.

Dad was, in his prime, almost six feet two inches tall. He was very slim built possessing a metabolism that could have fueled the electricity for our little town. He weighed all of one hundred and sixty five pounds…  ( Click for more )