Friends and Fellow Hounds,
It has been too long for me to be away from the keyboard connecting me with you. We often get caught up in the fires of present day living, which results in our losing touch with the soft flames of life, those people who cause our hearts to pulse with the embers of love and happiness. Scribbling out the Miles' Files is a refuge for me, a time to escape the hectic pace of the every day, work-a-day world. For the most part, my stories are thoughts from the past of "growing up" in small town Newport. Not so much living in the past, just remembering it. Some would tell you that "living in the past" is wasteful, so too may be drifting back to the past to remember the "good times." I'm not among those who would tell you that. During the waning days of the Vietnam conflict, the group Jethro Tull released the song "Living in the Past" (I believe around 1972) with the last verse of that song being "Let us close our eyes; outside their lives go on much faster. Oh, we won't give in, we'll keep living in the past." The past being remembered as a more peaceful time, a much slower time for enjoying the essence of life.
As you know, music from the past influences my memory. The songs from one's teen-age years never seem to fade away. It is often that soundtrack that leads me to a time of reflection, a time to "live in the past." The folk singer Pete Seeger wrote a song based on words found in the Book of Ecclesiastes. The Byrds brought the song to the radio airwaves in 1965 as "Turn, Turn, Turn" and its over simplified words helped bring life in focus for me. Lines from the song (and from the good book of Ecclesiastes) remind us that there is "a time to be born, a time to die," "a time to laugh, a time to weep," "a time to dance, a time to mourn." In recent days and weeks, these words have regularly run through my mind. Not because I've heard them on the oldies stations on the car radio, but because I've let myself do a little living in the past.
Over the past few weeks, death knocked on the door of the mothers of three of my littermates from the Class of 1970. Marjorie Black, Anna Jean Guinn, and Martha Bennett, the mothers of Joe Black, Greer Guinn and Gene Bennett, all answered that knock on the door. I have visions of all three of these loving mothers as women in their forties and fifties, the mothers of teenagers, the mothers of my friends. But as the song "Turn, Turn, Turn" reminds me, "to everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven."
And then just yesterday a jolly and happy man, a true and wonderful friend who walked, or lumbered, through this life under the name of Harley James Morehart was killed in an automobile accident. Perhaps James was listening to an oldies station as he drove over the narrow highway not far from home; he was prone to do that. He liked good music; music that made you move. Many of you readers may not have known James Morehart. He was not a Newport High School alum, but he loved the town and its schools. His wife Donna teaches in the Newport schools, his daughter Kara is a 2001 graduate of NHS, and son Matthew is a student in the ninth grade "back home" in Newport. For those who didn't know James Morehart, my heart mourns for you. For those who did know and love James, my heart dances with you.
I mentioned in one of my more recent Miles' Files how great an event the Newport Country Club annual Invitational golf tournament is. It will not be the same without James Morehart. Over the past five or more years it has been standard that Greg Hubbard and I would play at least one day with James and his partner during the golf tournament. James could hit the ball a long way, however accuracy was something else to consider. It was all about fun with James!!! And recently James was an active voice in supporting a sales tax referendum under the Take Charge for Jackson County Committee to improve the quality of life for the residents of my hometown. I so applaud those efforts and his voice!
What I will miss most though is the certainty of a big bear hug from James that I received on each visit to the First United Methodist Church when I return to see my mother. He always greeted me at church with a hug and a whispered word of love (if you can imagine James Morehart whispering). We attended church together when I lived in Newport throughout the 1980s; our children played together; we played together. We played hard together! In a weekly card game, James liked to try to win hands with a little bluffing tempered with some intimidation. He didn't win very much, but he would just laugh off his efforts. James called me "little man," but of course he could call every one little. James played football at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia where I live today. He has many friends in this area. James Morehart was a BIG man with a BIGGER heart. James Morehart was only 50 and very young at heart. I will miss him, his wife and family will miss him, his friends will miss him, Newport will miss him and the whole world will miss him. Perhaps James was listening to an oldies station when his truck hit that bridge just outside Beedeville. Perhaps the song on the radio was "Turn, Turn, Turn." Or perhaps it was Chad & Jeremy's "A Summer Song" that includes these words:
They say that all good things must end some day
Autumn leaves must fall
But don't you know that it hurts me so
To say goodbye to you
Wish you didn't have to go
No, no, no, no
So long James. I love you! All who knew you love you! James and the mothers of my school mates who have recently passed from this life are much like the autumn leaves that are falling from the trees in my back yard this very day. The brightness of these autumn leaves is a reminder of their smiles. The slow and drifting descent as they fall to the ground is a reminder to appreciate life with a measured approach, a slower pace and a loving touch. Don't know about the rest of you, but "living in the past" is time well spent for me to remember loving people and their influences on my life. Life's journey requires dealing with death. Death is an affirmation of the fragility of life. James Morehart and the mothers of my friends knew how to live life. Their lives and the lives of many others who have passed from this life are reflections of those times to laugh and to dance. Yes, we will weep and we will mourn, but their memories and the memories of those times spent together will return us to the "time to laugh" and the "time to dance."
"To everything their is a season."
I'm still on life's journey, Miles from Nowhere, guess I'll take my time ...
joe
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