Shindig At The Hall

A few pictures from the Hall of Fame soiree last Thursday night. I didn’t take enough photos. I put a few more on my Flickr.

I don’t guess there’s a way to tally up the miles these two have traveled between them the last 50 something years. Two living, breathing, legends….Ray Price and Earl Scruggs.

Quite a quartet with Hazel, nephew Smiff, Buddy Killen and Bob McLean

Ray Price meets Sista Smiff….”Is your mother Shirley?” (He didn’t say that, but, I bet you he was thinking it)

Driving Lesson Gone Bad

Stuff like this makes me a bit afraid to start teaching my teens to drive. #1 will be 15 on his next birthday so I’d better get at it.

Seems that most people I talk to learned to drive as kids, including myself. I can remember being as young as about 7 or 8 and sitting in Dad’s lap and we’d ride around the neighborhood. He’d have his feet on the pedals but I would steer. As I got older, I did the pedals and became the excellent driver I am today. (So far, I’ve never gotten a speeding ticket).

I think the teach them early method is better. Maybe we’ve just gotten so busy in our current society or too wimpy and helmet crazed. The public schools don’t even offer Driver’s Ed anymore. At least ours doesn’t.

If any of my kids kill me while I’m teaching them to drive, I will be, as that great philosopher and Friend of Smiff, Raymond E. Huffmaster would say….pissed right ON off. I will refuse to speak to them in Heaven.

Linkage

Out of the three Smiff kids, #1 Son gets the least amount of Whiffing. I don’t know why that is, for he is certainly Whiffable. It could be that he’s gotten to that age where he neither requires nor desires my presence as much as he used to. He is certainly, and has always been, how do I say it without sounding like a horrible mother, less demanding than either of his siblings.

Even when he was just a little bitty feller, a year old w when I was pregnant with his sister, he’d be content to stay in his playpen and watch CMT, nonstop, so I could rest. He’s just always been easy to deal with. Even in the nursery at what was then Westside Hospital, now Centennial, a nurse informed me I had a laid back child. “He is low key”, she said.

This is a big week for #1. He begins High School Thursday and will be headed over to Freshman Orientation tonight to get his schedule and have an idea where to go when he gets there later in the week.

Yes, yes…..I know what you’re thinking… Sista Smiff is entirely too young to have a child in high school. I do agree. The years are a’flyin’ by and it definitely leaves such a young mother, like myself, with some odd, mixed emotions about the whole deal.

I’m quite proud #1. I know he’ll do well in high school. I know one thing…he shore as hell better hit those books and make some good grades so he can get some scholarship money in a few years. He certainly has the potential and the smarts. Get him going sometime on the history of World Wars I & II. He could be on one of those documentaries they show on the History Channel.

The timing is good for #1 to get a nice mention in his Grandmother’s column on CMT this week. She tells the same story I told here last weekend. He’ll get a nice kick out of it.