Friday the 14th was Valentine's Day. We hope all had a wonderful day. I know we did and Nita also enjoyed a beautiful red heart box of Russell Stover's finest. Ann (Jesse's sister) and Ron joined us with a visit to Chumuckla, FL for the T. Graham Brown & Ronnie McDowell Concert.
Chumuckla is a community between Pace and Jay, Florida. Nothing near or around but farms and country. There is a combination Farmer's Opry House/Living Church and a rather stark campground that can accommodate motor homes and RV'S. We didn't take the Boomer Bus but may when we return in March for the Gene Watson Concert. The Opry House have country music concerts (obviously) and have a kitchen for producing good ole country style meals. Tonight it was country fried chicken, hamburger steaks w/fried onions, mashed potatoes, gravy and fried okra, biscuits and an ooey gooey dessert. Can't forget the ice tea and coffee
The billing was only for Ronnie but we were in for a very surprising and wonderful bonus when the opening singer was T.Graham Brown. His fame is being a most popular singer who performed on the Grand Ole Opry many times and shared concerts with singers like Ronnie McDowell, Kenny Rogers and was the opening singer for many other popular singers. He shared bands with Ronnie and sang many of his most popular hits like: "If You Could Only see Me Now", "Tell it Like it Used to Be", "Never Say Never" and "With This Ring" just to name a few. His "Wine Into Water" was an absolute down to earth heartfelt closure and gained a standing ovation.
Afterwards, we had the opportunity to share and discovered we had travelled down a similar road and we were thankful to our GOD and all the prayers for being here. We talked about a project he dearly loved that was building churches world wide called "International Cooperating Ministries"(icm.org) and I shared my project involving "Paint Your Heart Out Chesapeake" and "Eliminating Polio from the World" with Rotary International. His lovely wife, Sheila was by his side supporting him for the past 35 years. Nita gave him our calling card with our blog address and he promised to look at it. We think we have made new friends as we were invited to come visit when in his area.
late entry. T. Ness sent an email . So great to hear from him
Next up was Ronnie. He still had his charismatic mannerism about him and he paid tribute to the people he had shared concerts with. People like Elvis Presley, Conway Twitty (Harold Jenkins), George Jones and several others. He was also featured on The Grand Ole Opry several times He sang "The King is Gone", his most popular song, "Older Women Make better Lovers" and "You're Going to Ruin My Bad Reputation" and closed out with Elvis Presley's"Trilogy". He got a standing ovation for his attribute to all veterans and for including an impaired person in the audience to sing part of the song. He said he had been there many times over the years and he knew some of the people in the audience.and spoke to them personally.
He is an excellent painter. He painted one of Elvis in his younger days looking into a mirror and seeing a reflection of himself as "THE Elvis". Another painting was George Jones sitting on a lawn mower/tractor getting a DUI ticket (an actual happening-I remember reading about it years ago). He said George had ask him to paint it. His paintings were really "superb" and I now wish we had bought one (or both). He said he is now under contract to paint five paintings a year for five years for Walt Disney Productions. As a nice bonus, he gave away one print of each painting to the audience. He also sang happy birthday to a girl and paid attention to a 92 year old lady that he knew.
After the concert we drove back to Ann & Rons, endured a quickly forming and passing, speedy windy rain storm and then traveled back to Bay Minette. After arriving we wanted to surprise Jake ,Nita's grandson, as he had driven in from Ft Hood, TX after being honorably discharged from the Army. We walked into the River Pub after one a.m., and surprised the heck out of him. He was totally stunned. (He has slipped in and surprised me so many times, I really wanted to get him back, and did). We are so proud of him and so happy to have him home and back into civilian life after 4 yrs and a few months, and after having served tours in SC, Arizona, Germany and Texas. Welcome home Jake! Here he is with my youngest son Jeff (with beard) at Jeff's Pub. Jeff wasn't there but we wanted to post this photo of him and Jake.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Hope you like our blog, please leave a comment.