"Worry, Why Do I Let Myself Worry?"

I was going to write something earlier, but I couldn't locate my pencil trimmer until today. So here goes Ol' Simmons wandering off on this wonderful Labor Day weekend, jotting down an old story from his past.

It was just a few years ago on a Labor Day weekend when a friend of mine asked me to go along on a short trip to Tennessee. Being in a rather unpleasant frame of mind at the time, I elected to tag along with her for the weekend. Jo was making this road trip to pick up some personal items from the house of her recently deceased mother and Ol' Simmons was going just to get out of Greene County and to provide Jo with some company on the trip. Her late mother had resided in the small town of Bruceton, which is conveniently located about midway between Huntingdon and Camden. It reminded me a lot of Coalmont only slightly smaller and with a lot less traffic. We gathered up Jo's personal belongings (a bunch of old pictures, a few books and an old ball peen hammer) in less than an hour and drove to Camden to find a bite to eat. As we shared a medium pizza with extra cheese, we learned from the waitress about the 30 mile yard sale. Jo said that we had to stay an extra day to check it out. I've always said that there is nothing like sailing around a bunch of yards trying to find the buy of a lifetime.

This annual yard sale sort of winds around Highway 69 and creates some Los Angeles-like traffic jams, so we gave up and found a parking space and just walked. We probably only saw 300 yards of the 30 miles of yard sales, but we did meet and talk with some fine people; plus I found a unique but rusty Sam Snead Pitching Wedge, which I negotiated down to five dollars. While we were yard sailing, we were told about the Patsy Cline Crash Site Memorial and decided that we had to visit this little piece of history or we would regret it for the rest of our lives or for at least a week or two, whichever came first. For those of you unfamiliar with Patsy Cline, she was a pop/country singer who recorded such favorites as 'Crazy', 'I Fall to Pieces' and 'Sweet Dreams'. On March 5th, 1963, her plane crashed in the woods just outside of Camden, Tennessee and Patsy perished along with Hawkshaw Hawkins, Cowboy Copas and Patsy's manager, Randy Hughes. As far as memorials go, this one is rather small, hard to find and a little morbid, but now I've added it to my ever growing list of strange and eerie experiences.

We ate some catfish that evening with some of our new found friends at a very rustic and very dark Log Cabin Restaurant (just guessed at the name) and then drank a few cold ones in our friends' backyard before retiring to our motel. The next morning we awoke to a nasty little surprise in the motel parking lot. Someone had decided that they wanted my brand-spanking new $5 Sam Snead Pitching Wedge so badly that they pried open the trunk on Jo's car and stole it. Unfortunately, they took all of the personal belongings which Jo had just recovered from her mother's place, except for the ball peen hammer. I had been examining the carvings on the handle while riding shotgun, so it wasn't in the trunk. I'm fairly sure one of the carvings was made by Daniel Boone or maybe David Boots, it's really kind of hard to tell.

Jo and her new husband Jon are now living in Wyoming. She tells me that they have built a new bar in their basement and they call it Jo-Jons Subterranean Saloon. They have printed out every single one of the articles that I have written, placed them in a notebook on the bar and tell their friends that they know this famous writer from back east. Golly that is embarrassing, but funny (back east? - heck I'm from the Midwest).

Besides having an Ol' Simmons honorary barstool, they have a plaque above the bar that says "A Nice Place to get Hammered"...it hangs just above a carved-up, old ball peen hammer. Listen, can't you almost hear Hawkshaw Hawkins on the jukebox singing 'Lonesome 7-7203'?