REMEMBER THE FORMER THINGS

REMEMBER THE FORMER THINGS

Recently our dear friend Johnny Barton lost his lovely wife of 51 years. At Billie’s memorial service Johnny felt he was the perfect person to deliver his wife’s eulogy, saying, “No one knew Billie better than me and so I decided I should be the one to share about her life.”

We laughed, cried and rejoiced with Johnny as he shared about their wonderful life together as sweethearts for over half a century. The shared memories made us all feel like we knew Billie better.

When we meet her in heaven we’ll have to check if all the stories Johnny told were accurate…especially the one where he said she punched a man in the nose and told him to stay away from her daughter!

After the memorial service we invited some folks home for lunch. We hadn’t seen them in years and this seemed like a good time to share the roast chicken I had put in the oven before leaving for the church that morning.

We first met Coy and Carlene Goff in 1975 when I was a disc jockey at WVMG. Coy had a little auto body shop in Warner Robins and I was selling radio advertising. I knew I had a friend (and a sale) when I walked in his shop. He was listening to our station.


One day I invited him to bring his wife and his children down to Cochran for dinner. This was back in the day when our roof had so many leaks that Snuffy Smith himself wouldn’t have had enough pots and pans to catch them all.

I prayed, oh how I prayed, “Lord please don’t let it rain when Coy and his family come down for dinner.”

Obviously I didn’t have a very good connection to heaven because it not only rained…it poured…outside and inside! Carlene, whom I had never met until that evening, was in shock. Did people really live like Ma and Pa Kettle?

I don’t remember what we had for dinner that night, but I do remember I was always grateful the ceiling never leaked over the 7 foot round picnic table we had, nor over the chairs. Other than the drip-drip-drip of the water in the pots and pans we had a nice quiet evening.

After dinner I took the whole family to the radio station. I let them watch me make a commercial for their body shop, which was really fun for their little girls.

Many years later I found out that Carlene told Coy she would never be embarrassed to ask anyone to their house again after being with us. (During this time in their lives the Goffs had a very small home with unusually low ceilings. Today they have a beautiful large home on 200 acres and a thriving successful business in Warner Robins.)

What Carlene learned that day was friendship and love are not dependent on having everything ‘just so’. People don’t really care about your surroundings. They want to know YOU care! Our friendship has remained strong through the years and our love for each other has only grown.

God told the children of Israel to remember all the great things He had done for them in the past, because in remembering those things their faith would grow.

Our roof doesn’t leak anymore and the old wooden picnic table has been replaced with a more modern looking table. Our space heaters have been replaced with a central heat and air conditioning system and instead of a clothes line I have a dryer.

Sometimes Charlie and I sit on our porch swing (the same one that was here when we bought the old place in 1974) and reminisce about how good the Lord has been to us. There have been trials, but for every trial there has been matching grace. Life hasn’t been perfect (it never is), but we realize how much we have to be thankful for when we look back…when we remember.


“Remember how the Lord your God led you through the wilderness for these forty years, humbling you and testing you to prove your character, and to find out whether or not you would obey his commands. “ (Deut. 8:2)

A NEW GENERATION BUILDING MEMORIES (Grandchildren, Zach, Isaac, Graycen and Eli)