I have been writing this column and others like it for almost 40 years. I have had a great time doing it. I have referred to it as various things such as the divine rag, righteous writ, blessed blurb, beatific bleat, etc. Always I have had a serious ulterior motive underneath the jocularity but sometimes by the time it comes off the press, I can’t remember what the point was. Mostly I have thought of it as a weekly note to friends and family back home. As you longtime readers know, I am often in error but never without an opinion. I hope you have learned that I never want to win an argument at the expense of a friendship. Through the years I have made loads of friends and I hear from them often.

     Recently I have been looking back over a stack of these old columns. It happened because occasionally I have a bout of insomnia. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I turn on the computer and leaf through the old files looking for a laugh. Lately I have realized that, without my intending it, these columns have become a kind of personal memoir for me. Now I’m working back through them correcting some old typos and a few errors of fact. I’m doing this because I, like most Southern preachers, am somewhat inclined to speak in hyperbole—exaggeration to make a point. It has occurred to me that sometime my children and grand children may find these and wonder what kind of old geezer Pops was.

     Most of the funniest stuff—I prefer to call it “material”—I’ve written is actually true. I wrote about the time a few years ago when I had a heart attack while preaching and fell backwards out of the elevated pulpit, landing upside down and wedged between the church organ and a choir pew. I am told, as I regained consciousness that, I said to my associate minister, “Please have the congregation sing a hymn and take up a collection. Ask folk to be generous in their giving.” When I returned to the pulpit a few days later, I began my sermon by saying to my wide-eyed congregation, “I have always believed I am capable of preaching myself to sleep. Now, I have proved it. I will do almost anything to wake up a crowd.”

     I have been inspired by things people have given me and I told you about them in this column. Like the time I was slowly pulling ahead when the traffic light turned green. The fellow behind me blew his horn loudly. I looked in my rear view mirror and noticed he was waving at me and flashing a “V for Victory sign.” I figured he was a veteran who had been wounded. He was missing his index finger. But he was a friendly guy. Of course, I couldn’t hear what he was yelling. It had something to do with me being a Sweet Old Baptist. I could tell that from reading his lips. He was in a big hurry so he just used the initials S.O.B. He didn’t have any way of knowing that I’m a Methodist. I appreciated his friendliness anyhow.

     I have chronicled some of my most notable failures in this column. I’m always trying to educate people from the northern kingdom who move down South. They are generally fine folk, but they often are just plain ignorant about Southern stuff. So I tried to get up a group to go down to Salley, South Carolina to participate in the annual “Chitlin’ Strut.” It was a total disaster. Not a single person signed on to make this pilgrimage. However, I am not one to give up easily. Maybe I need to start promoting the trip earlier next time.

     Last year I had a computer crash and lost over a thousand old columns. I took it as a sign from God that they were not worth saving. Lucky for me, though, I saved a few hundred that are helping me remember lots of good times with all you loyal readers. I thank you for your cards, letters, and emails. This young, new year is already shaping up as a good time for making a host of new memories. Y’all keep the good stuff—er…make that “material” —coming!

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