Sophie's Journey - A Richard Lawry novel experience

Take a journey with Sophie Petersen as her story takes shape in a historical novel by Richard Lawry. 

Sophie's Journey 

by Richard Lawry

Chapter 1 - The Scent of Lime

Chapter 2 - The Stones of Jelling

Chapter 3 - The Promise of Zion

Chapter 4 - The Dream

Sophie's Journey - Chapter 4 - The Dream

 Sophie's Journey Chapter 4

The Dream

After three days of solid rain, the farmyard had turned to mud. Sophie stepped inside, pulled off her boots, and felt the damp work its way through the cottage stones and into her bones. The fire was almost out. She leaned back in her chair and let her eyes close. Up in the loft, her five children breathed in rhythm. That was what mattered.

Sleep didn't come easily, but when it did, it hit her like a door swinging open. The cottage walls went soft and vanished. The peat smoke disappeared, replaced by thin, sharp air she'd never breathed before. She stood on a plain of gold grass that rolled toward mountains with white teeth biting into a sky too blue to be real. The light was different here - hard, clear, nothing like the soft mist of home. Long shadows danced across ground no plow had ever touched.

Two men stood waiting. They wore coats that had seen hard use, boots dusty from miles. The first was tall, with a high forehead and eyes that held the memory of a frozen river. He looked tired but dignified. The second man's face was weathered, his gaze sharp and still, like the standing stones of Jelling.

"My name is Erastus Snow," the tall one said, though his words seemed to unfold in her mind rather than reach her ears. "Don't fear the distance, Sophie. The road is long, and winter will be hard, but the Covenant is written in the snow. Your children's names are on the valley stones. Leave the dead to the dead. Walk toward the light."

The second man stepped forward. He didn't touch her, but warmth flooded through her anyway, like being held from the inside. "I am Peter Hansen," he said. "A crown of glory is not woven from silk, but from the grit of the trail and the sacrifice of the mother," he added, his authority melodic and absolute. "Go to Zion, and you shall behold the face of the Prophet, and your legacy shall be a forest grown from a single, stubborn seed in the wilderness."

Sophie reached out, her fingers brushing against a coldness that felt like the first frost of autumn, and then the mountains shattered into a thousand shards of grey light. She sat bolt upright in her chair, the early morning sun bleeding through the small window of the cottage, her heart hammering against her ribs.

The hearth felt cold now. A weight settled over everything. The room wasn't home anymore - it was a cell. I've seen a better land, she thought, and this is ruined for me. She wept in the stillness, a traveler returned to a country she no longer knew. She went through the motions - pulling down the pot for porridge, building up the fire - but the dream stayed behind her eyes, a ghost in the morning gloom.

Three weeks later, Sophie stood in the yard with her arms full of wet sheets. The sun finally had some strength. The children played by the well. Peter showed Anne how to balance a stick on her chin. Emma held Otto's hand and watched the road the way she'd done since the funeral. Thomas turned cartwheels. The village felt smaller today, the field boundaries like bars she was slowly sawing through.

A movement on the lane caught her eye. Two figures walked with purpose, and their clothing set them apart from the local farmers. As they drew closer, Sophie felt a prickle of recognition at the base of her neck. They were carrying small suitcases, their black coats dusty but neat, their hats shaded low against the glare. She let the sheet fall against her skirts and waited by the gate.

"Good morning, Sister," the taller man said, stopping and removing his hat to reveal a high, intelligent forehead. "We are travelers far from home, seeking those who have ears to hear a message of great joy."

Sophie looked from him to his companion - that piercing gaze, exactly as she'd seen it against the white mountains. Her breath caught. They were the men from her dream, standing in the mud of her own yard.

"I know who you are," she said, her voice thin and strange. "Erastus Snow and Peter Hansen. You've come from the mountains."

They exchanged a look of quiet surprise but didn't question her. They stepped into the yard with a grace that seemed to settle the air. For the next hour, they sat on the bench beneath the eaves, speaking of a prophet in a grove and gold plates pulled from the earth. They spoke of restoration, of a kingdom rising in the American desert where Saints gathered from every nation.

Sophie listened, hands folded tight, feeling each word click home like a key in a rusted lock. The framework of her life - providing for the children, harvest schedules, village hierarchy - dissolved into something frightening and beautiful. She looked at her children gathered around with wide eyes and saw them differently. Not a fatherless brood, but the first generation of a new world.

"I want to be baptized," she said, interrupting as the tall man described the plains crossing. "I've seen the valley. I've heard the promise. I won't stay here and watch my children wither in the shadow of burial mounds."

Two days later, they stood in a secluded bend of the stream, the water grey and biting, matching the sky. When she rose, her old life seemed to wash downstream with the current. Her skin tingled. Her mind felt scrubbed clean. Peter Hansen took her hand as she stepped onto the muddy bank, his grip firm, his eyes holding the secret of the road ahead.

"Keep your faith like a lamp, Sophie Petersen," he whispered, his voice low and resonant. "If you remain true to the covenant, you shall one day stand in the presence of the Prophet in the Great Salt Lake City, and you shall know that every mile was a sanctified step toward your own salvation."

That promise became a hard diamond in her heart, giving her strength against the cold stares of former friends. To the neighbors, she was a woman lost to delusion, but she moved with purpose, working with the missionaries to plot a course for herself and her five children.

A few weeks later, Marianne Lautrup came to the cottage, her face etched with frantic terror. She sat at the table, tea untouched, twisting her shawl fringe until it frayed. News of Sophie's conversion had spread through Gentofte like wildfire, and for Marianne, it was a tear in the fabric of everything real.

"They say you are leaving for the wilderness, Sophie," Marianne said, her voice trembling. "They say you are taking the children to America, a place of savages and heat. How can you do this? How can you throw away everything we have ever known for a dream you cannot see?"

Sophie sat across from her, her expression calm. "I am not throwing it away, Marianne. I am trading it for something that will last. I am trading a grave for a garden."

"But the ocean... the monsters in the deep," Marianne argued, her eyes filling with tears. "And the Americans. My father says they are a people of blood and violence. We are simple women. We belong here, where the bells of the church ring every Sunday, and the hills stay where they are put."

Sophie reached out, her hand steady on Marianne's arm. "The hills here are heavy with the dead. I want to live where mountains are high enough to touch heaven. Come with us. There's a place for you in the company, a house for you in the valley."

Marianne looked at her, and the fear in her eyes was plain. "I'm afraid, Sophie. I'm so afraid I'll break somewhere in that big empty country, and no one will be there to find the pieces."

"I will find them," Sophie said, her voice a quiet, stubborn vow. "We will walk until this life is behind us and the sun is at our backs. We will go together."

Marianne let out a long, shuddering breath, bowing her head until her forehead touched the rough wood. The kitchen fell silent except for the clock and distant children's laughter. In that moment, the covenant wasn't just between Sophie and God. It was between two women choosing to leap into darkness for a light they hadn't yet felt.

"I'll go," Marianne whispered, the words sounding like surrender. "I'll go because I can't stay here and watch the horizon without you on it."

Sophie's Journey - Chapter 3 - The Promise of Zion

Sophie's Journey Chapter 3

The Promise of Zion

The rain had come back to Gentofte, each drop drumming the thatched roof with the slow, inexorable patience of fate. Sophie sat hunched at the kitchen table, her husband’s debts unfurled before her; a tattered map of a land she felt trapped inside. Each neat line, each figure inked in Peter’s careful hand, was a boundary she could not cross, a tally of dreams that had withered before their time. The sum of it was a future stripped to bone: floors to be scrubbed until her knuckles bled, fine lace to stitch by fading lamplight as her eyes blurred—the arithmetic of loss, written in sorrow and survival.

The future pressed heavily on her chest, as if the rain itself had seeped through her skin. She felt it as she traced the rim of Peter’s empty mug, as she watched Emma and Anne sleep a little longer than usual, curled together like kittens for comfort. The ledger on the table haunted her, its columns carrying the weight of decisions she wasn’t ready to make. Each number was a tally not just of what they owed, but of all the things she couldn’t give her children.

A sudden knock splintered the hush of the cottage, sending Sophie’s thoughts skittering like startled birds. On the threshold stood Marianne Lautrup, her shawl clutched close, rain shining on her cheeks and lashes. She slipped inside without waiting, scattering droplets across the floor as she shook out her skirts, movements quick and restless. In her eyes, a light flickered that Sophie hadn’t seen in what felt like a lifetime; a fragile, reckless shimmer that might have been hope, trembling on the edge of breaking through.

"You must come, Sophie," Marianne said, her voice breathless and thin. "There is a man in the village who will be speaking at the brewery. A missionary from America. He is speaking of a place they call Zion."

Sophie looked back at the ledger, at the names of the men Peter had owed money to—the miller, the blacksmith, the merchant in Copenhagen. "I have numbers to tend to, Marianne. A missionary will not pay for the bread my children eat tonight."

"He says the land is free for those who will work it," Marianne insisted, reaching out to touch Sophie's arm with a hand that felt fragile as dried parchment. "He speaks of a valley where no one is a widow because everyone is a sister. Please. Come with me to listen. Even if it is only for an hour."

Sophie paused, her eyes settling on the cradle in the corner. Otto was sleeping there, curled small and perfect in the shadow of old wood. The rockers were polished from years of gentle use, softened by the weight of every child who’d been comforted in that spot, the memory of her husband’s family pressed into every curve. If she stayed, the cradle would stay, and so would the debt. Her children would grow into the same somber landscape that had swallowed their father, their futures shaped by the same cold stone and stubborn mud.

Sophie relented, partly for Marianne, partly because there was nothing else to do against the tide of her own despair. She bundled the children, tucked Otto snug against her chest, and followed as the village blurred by in gray and green, the rain a constant, thin music on her shoulders.

The brewery was dim and sprawling, air heavy with the scent of fermented grain and old smoke. The room was packed tight; forty souls huddled shoulder to shoulder on rough benches, every breath thick and communal. At the front, atop a battered stone bench, stood a man whose coat was threadbare at the elbows, yet whose eyes shone with startling conviction. He spoke—not with the droning calm of the village pastor, but with a ringing, melodic certainty that seemed to settle straight into the hollows of Sophie’s bones. He conjured visions of America: majestic mountains that touched the sky, beautiful, clean rivers, wild soil untouched by a king’s decree. He spoke of a prophet, and of a gathering so immense it would draw the faithful from every far-off place until they stood together, remade into something new.

"Zion is not a dream," the missionary said, his voice cutting through the damp chill of the room. "It is a promise made by a God who sees the widow and the fatherless. It is a land of mountains and fields, of milk and honey, where your children will grow tall under a sun that does not hide behind the mists of the North Sea."

Sophie sat very still, her hands folded in her lap. She was a woman who measured the world in bushels and kroner, a woman who knew the exact weight of a winter coat and the cost of a burial shroud. The missionary's words were a direct assault on the professional framework of her life, an invitation to discard the ledger in favor of a legacy she couldn't yet see. She looked at Marianne, who was leaning forward, her face illuminated by a whimsical sort of longing that Sophie found both beautiful and deeply alarming.

Sophie kept listening, feeling doubt and yearning twist together inside her chest. Beside her, Marianne leaned in listening with a wistful hunger that made Sophie’s heart ache—a beauty in it, yes, but also something fragile and dangerous, as if hope itself might tip them both over the edge.

Marianne turned to Sophie, cheeks flushed with longing and fear. “It sounds like a fairy tale,” she whispered, but even as she said it, Sophie saw that Marianne wanted to believe.

The meeting faded into a murmur of doubt and amazement, villagers slipping out into the drizzle, shoulders hunched against more than just the rain. Sophie and the children walked at Marianne’s side, boots sinking into the muddy grooves of the lane. The smell of malt clung to them, heavy and sweet, the signature of a life that once felt solid but now pressed in on all sides. Marianne’s voice ran on in anxious spirals—talk of routines, of roots too deep to pull free, of how the world might come apart if they dared to let go.

"My father’s house is here, Sophie," Marianne said, her voice rising in a pitch of frantic logic. "My mother’s grave is here. We have the church, the village, and the seasons we know. To leave for a wilderness... it is madness. My cousin in Copenhagen says the Americans are savages who live in tents."

Sophie didn't answer for a long time, watching the water stream from Marianne’s hood, tracing lines down her friend’s tired face. She thought of Peter Jr. carrying burdens too heavy for his age, Emma’s shrinking cheeks, the way the cradle in the corner held baby Otto and his uncertain future. 

"They have land there, Marianne. Land that belongs to no king. If I stay here, my sons will be workers on a farm that will never be theirs. My daughters will marry men with no future that will owe money to the same millers we do." Her voice caught. “I see no future for them here that isn’t just another version of mine.”

The words frightened her as she spoke them, as if by naming her discontent she was inviting disaster. But something else unfurled with the fear—a resolve that surprised her with its quiet steadiness.

"But the sea," Marianne argued, her steps faltering. "The Atlantic is a graveyard. And after that, thousands of miles of grass and heat. We are Danish women, Sophie. We are built for the mist and the cold, not for the sun of a desert."

Sophie stopped and turned to her friend. The rain was running down Marianne’s face, tracing the lines of a life that had turned her edges hard and fearful. "You can still imagine a life here, Marianne. You can imagine a day where the sun comes out, and the debt is gone, and the children are fed. I cannot. Every time I look at the horizon, I see a grave waiting for me."

"You are strong," Marianne whispered, the kind of pity in her voice that made Sophie want to run into the woods and hide. "You always were. But this... this is different. This is leaving everything we are."

"Maybe everything we are isn't enough anymore," Sophie said. 

The realization didn't come as a lightning strike; it came as a slow, cold settling of the spirit. When Sophie returned to her cottage, she did not open the ledger. Instead, she gathered the hymnal from its shelf, its embossed letters dulled by so many hands, and ran her thumb along the spine, feeling the weight of her inheritance—faith, music, memory. Then she sat and began a new list, this one of things to sell: the cattle, the chickens, the copper pots, the table scarred by decades of use. As she wrote, she tried to see these things not as loss, but as the currency of possibility.

Anne wandered into the kitchen, sleep-heavy, and climbed into Sophie’s lap. Sophie pressed her cheek into the child’s hair, letting the scent of woodsmoke and wool steady her. She did not know what kind of world waited across the sea, or if such a place as Zion truly existed. But for the first time in many months, hope flickered quietly at the edge of her exhaustion.

Sophie stayed awake long after the children were asleep, listening to the rain. She thought of the missionary's eyes and the way he had spoken of Zion. She didn't know if she believed in the prophet, but she believed in the mountains. She believed in the possibility of a horizon that didn't end in a neighbor's fence.

Sleep eluded her most of the night. When morning finally broke—thin and colorless—Sophie rose to meet it. She didn't look to the comfort of tilled fields or the neat borders of neighbors' land, but westward, toward that uncertain darkness that could, with enough courage, turn into day.

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Sophie's Journey - Chapter 2 - The Stones of Jelling

 

Sophie's Journey - Chapter 2 

The Stones of Jelling

The morning mist blanketed Gentofte like a tender embrace, a swirl of gauzy gray weaving through the thatched rooftops and curling around the sturdy stone walls of nearby homes. Sophie Petersen stood by the small, square window of her cottage, the aged glass, mottled and uneven, distorting the landscape into soft, wavering shapes—much like her own fragmented thoughts. Since the churchyard had claimed Peter, silence had become a pervasive presence in their home, a heavy weight settling into the corners alongside dust. Each breath she took echoed in the stillness, amplifying the absence that wrapped around her like a shroud.

As she turned away from the window, her gaze fell upon her three-year-old Emma, sitting at the table with her small hands clasped over a bowl of cold porridge. The child’s eyes were too big for her face, shadowed with a grief that felt far too grown-up for her tender years. Across from her, Peter, now eight, focused intently on carving a piece of scrap wood—his small fingers moving with the stubborn determination of his father, ignoring the world as he chiseled away, lost in his task.

“Eat your breakfast, Emma,” Sophie said, her voice brittle in the quiet room. “We must set out for the Stones of Jelling before the rain returns.”

“Why do we have to go?” Emma’s question hung in the air, innocent yet profound. Sophie hesitated, her hand resting on the back of a chair crafted by her husband’s grandfather—a solid piece of oak, stained dark with time and memories, a testament to roots that ran deep into the soil. She felt the rough grain beneath her palm, a reminder of the ties that bound her to this damp, emerald earth. In Denmark, a widow was an understood phenomenon, her future a predictable decline into charity and toil, fading quietly into the village’s gray backdrop.

“I don’t know, Emma,” she replied, her voice gentler now. “But we are seeking a sign. Perhaps we will learn that there is more for us than this.”

They traveled slowly through land Sophie had once thought beautiful, but today it closed in on her. Lush fields, purple heather blooming against the green, and beyond them, the fine houses of the rich, making her own debts feel sharper. She was twenty-nine. Danish society said her best years were done, buried with Peter. Her children would be farmhands on other men's land, working for a roof and bread enough to keep working.

Marianne Lautrup walked beside her, her steps light, her gaze drifting toward the horizon, so different from the weight that pressed upon Sophie’s chest. “It’s so green here, isn’t it?” Marianne mused, her voice airy, untouched by the knots tightening in Sophie’s gut.

When they arrived at the ancient burial mounds of Jelling, the clouds parted just enough for the afternoon sun to peek through, illuminating the mounds like the backs of sleeping giants, cloaked in grass shimmering with the remnants of rain. Here lay the monuments to Gorm and Thyra, the royal couple who had carved a legacy into the land a millennium ago, their history a heavy mantle that felt suffocating in its permanence. Sophie left the children with Marianne at the base of the North Mound and began her ascent alone, her breath coming in short, rhythmic bursts, each step echoing her struggle.

The wind at the summit was sharp, carrying the scents of salt and damp wool. As Sophie stood at the mound’s heart, she gazed out over the village, the church spire rising defiantly, and the patchwork fields stretching toward the sea. From this vantage, the world lay laid out like a map, boundaries drawn in stone, every path leading back to the same ancient markers. A fierce resentment surged within her for the ancestors beneath her feet—those who had lived and died in this narrow circle, complacent in being part of the landscape rather than its captains.

She pressed her hands against her abdomen, feeling the slight tension of her hidden pregnancy, a secret that felt both like a betrayal of her past and a demand for the future. If she remained here, this child would be born into a world of limited air, where every choice meant compromising hunger against dignity. The mounds stood as reminders of a thousand years of staying put, an unyielding tradition that allowed survival but stifled rebirth.

“Is this all there is?” she whispered into the wind, her words swallowed by the rustling grass. “Must my child’s spirit wither here, shackled by my own fears?”

Closing her eyes, she inhaled deeply, seeking to memorize the unique scent of the Danish landscape—the sharp tang of the sea mingling with the rich, damp aroma of the earth. It was a beautiful fragrance, one that had nourished her through childhood and marriage, yet now it felt like a warning, the scent of a room with all windows shuttered tight. Grief for Peter melded with an insatiable longing for a horizon that didn’t end with a neighbor’s fence.

Peering down at her children playing in the shadows of the mounds, she saw not who they were, but who they might become—mere echoes of themselves, diluted by a society that had no place for a widow’s brood.

Descending the mound, her boots slipped slightly on the wet grass. At the bottom, Peter waited, his expression unreadable. He had paused his carving, his small hand tracing the ancient engravings of a Christ figure entwined in vines on the great runestone. His father’s eyes mirrored in his own—dark, serious, filled with a quiet intensity that both comforted and terrified her.

"Mother," Peter said, his voice dropping an octave as he looked up at her. "The stone says King Harald Bluetooth made the Danes Christian. Does that mean we have to stay where the king is?"

Sophie knelt beside him, the damp earth seeping into the fabric of her dress. She studied the runestone, centuries of history frozen in its granite, and then gazed at the living boy before her. “No, Peter,” she replied, her hand resting gently on the back of his neck. “It means we carry our faith with us. The land is just dirt.”

Marianne approached, cradling little Anne, who nibbled on a dried apple slice. “You look different, Sophie. Like you’ve seen something up there.”

"I saw the end of a road, Marianne," Sophie replied, standing and brushing the grass from her skirts. "I saw a future that feels like a grave, and I decided I wasn't ready to lie down in it yet."

Gathering her children, her movements grew efficient, devoid of the reluctance that had plagued her since Peter’s funeral. She felt the gaze of other villagers as they walked back through the square—the curious, the pitying, the judgmental. They were a family of ghosts in mourning, passing through a world that was already moving on without them. Sophie didn’t look back at the mounds; she kept her eyes fixed on the road ahead, taking in the way evening light danced upon puddles in the ruts of the track, reflecting the promise of change.

When they reached the cottage, the air inside was cold, carrying the scent of extinguished embers. Sophie didn’t light a fire. Instead, she sat at the scarred wooden table, pulling out a small piece of paper, her charcoal pencil poised over the blank surface. She began to list the possessions they could part with: the land, the livestock, the heavy oak furniture, the plow that once brought pride to Peter’s heart. Each item represented a piece of her life being exchanged for the currency of escape.

Emma came to stand beside her, leaning her head against Sophie’s shoulder. "Are you sad, Mama?"

Sophie wrapped her arm around the girl, feeling the frailty of her small frame and the steady rhythm of her heartbeat. Fear still lingered, a sharp chill in the center of her chest, yet it no longer reigned supreme. It was simply another fact to be managed, an entry in the ledger of their lives.

"Yes, Emma," Sophie whispered. "But I'm also happy to have a sweet daughter like you."

That night, Sophie lay in darkness, listening to the rhythmic breathing of her children, the creaking of the old house settling in the wind. She thought of the burial mounds, silent in the mist, and understood that she was no longer one of their people. She was a woman who had already departed, stepping toward a horizon only she could envision.

Before dawn, she rose and walked to the small garden behind the cottage. Kneeling, she dug her fingers into the earth, feeling the cool grit and the life pulsing just beneath the surface. She didn’t pray for comfort or ease; she prayed for the strength to be as enduring as the Stones of Jelling and as relentless as the wind that swept across the North Sea. Standing, she wiped her hands on her apron, the dark soil leaving a map upon her white fabric, a testament to her resolve.

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You Might Be a Country Boy If

In the last year of his life, my Daddy, Bob Lawry, wrote a list of things titled "You Might be a Country Boy If..."  Here is the complete list

You Might Be a Country Boy If...

You have used your boot to carry water from the ditch to fill your radiator

You have rocked your car back and forth to pick up the last bit of gas when you are on empty

You have ever blown in your gas tank when vapor locked

You ever poured water from the ditch on the fuel pump when vapor locked

You ever drove home on a flat tire (whomp, whomp, whomp)

You ever road a train behind a steam engine

You ever poured water into the master cylinder when you were out of brake fluid

You ever made your girlfriend shift gears because your right arm was occupied

You ever drove home with the park lights when the last headlight went out

You ever used a paper matchbook to gauge the point gap

You ever used a fence post for a jack to change a tire

You ever drove home on the rim when you had a flat tire

You ever used oatmeal for stop leak

You ever pumped up a flat tire with a hand pump

You ever painted a car with Mama's powder puff

You ever hitched up a team of horses to pull your car to start it

You ever herded cattle with a Model A Ford

You ever hauled calves home in the back seat of your car

You ever rode in the rumble seat in the rain

You ever stuck your head out the window when your windshield iced up

You ever stuck your head out the window when you were sleepy

You ever painted whitewalls with a brush

You ever put in 50 cents worth of gas at a time

You ever stopped a gas tank leak with soap

You ever filed your points with your girlfriend's fingernail file

You ever drove looking through the steering wheel when you were too little to see over the top

You ever used the hand throttle for cruise control

You ever patched a tube beside the road

You ever made a slingshot from an old inner tube

You ever geared down when your brakes were bad

You ever speed shifted without using the clutch

You always kept a blanket in the car because the heater didn't work

You ever kept a sack in front of the radiator because you didn't have enough antifreeze

You ever hitchhiked across more than two states

You ever cut wood with a crosscut saw

You ever carried in enough wood to last all night and the next morning

You ever walked in the snow to the outhouse in the middle of the night

You ever drug in the metal tub to take your weekly bath

You ever helped your Mama hang the wash on the clothesline

You ever licked the beater when Mama made cake

You ever hoed cuckleburrs out of the cornfield

You ever took a bath in the creek on a hot summer evening

You ever picked strawberries for five cents a quart

You ever peddled corn door to door for twenty-five cents a dozen then ate tomatoes and cheese in the park

You ever drove the Model A when you were eight years old

Your Mama cooked on a wood cookstove and heated the house with a Warm Morning wood heater

You never heard of boughten dog food. Dogs ate table scraps, milk, and hunted for themselves

You ever poked wires on a stationary hay baler powered by a big belt running to an old McCormick-Deering tractor

You ever drank warm water from a glass jug wrapped in a gunny sack

You grew up in 100-plus degree summers with no electricity and a wood cookstove, canning corn, tomatoes, and green beans in a hot kitchen

You ever picked out black walnuts by hand for Christmas candy and bitterscotch pies

You ever took a walk down the raos after supper to listen to the Whip-poor-wills

You ever pulled homemade taffy

You ever made fudge with black walnuts and pecans

You ever made Jello, put the bowl in a bucket, and let it down in the well to set the Jello

You ever put a jar of milk in a bucket, and let it down in the well to keep it cool

You ever begged Mama and Daddy to let you stay all night with cousins on Saturday Night and Sunday

You ever stayed up Saturday night til midnight listening to the Grand Ole Opry on WSM Nashville, Tennessee

Arkansas Rain

Arkansas Rain

by Richard Lawry

Two lanes

Heart pains

Empty Coke can

In the cup holder

Feeling low

Dashboard glow

Clouds in the sky

Like a cold shoulder

Road sign says

I'm near Hot Springs

Wipers slap

A tired refrain

Headlights shine

On ghostly things

And the rain starts up again

Driving through

The Arkansas rain

Taillights shimmering

In a silver vein

Thunder rolling

Like it knows my name

But it can't explain

Why all the cracks

On this broken windshield

Are spelling out your name

I'm just driving

Through the Arkansas rain

White lines

Tall pines

Headlights flicker

As the road drifts by

Reveries

Sad memories

A soulful song

Makes me start to cry

Reminders of

Last summers trips

Eureka Springs

The Crescent Hotel

Your sweet breath

Still on my lips

And the rain starts up again

Driving through

The Arkansas rain

Taillights shimmering

In a silver vein

Thunder rolling

Like it knows my name

But it can't explain

Why all the cracks

On this broken windshield

Are spelling out your name

I'm just driving

Through the Arkansas rain

I let the cruise hold steady

While my heart hits the brakes

Driving in the Arkansas rain

I could turn back

I could call you

But I'm just driving on

In the Arkansas rain

Driving through

The Arkansas rain

Taillights shimmering

In a silver vein

Thunder rolling

Like it knows my name

But it can't explain

Why all the cracks

On this broken windshield

Are spelling out your name

I'm just driving

Through the Arkansas rain

Driving on through

The Arkansas rain

Yeah

I keep driving

I keep on driving

Driving

Through the Arkansas rain

You can listen to the song as recorded by Faded Chrome at this link

You Might Be a Country Boy If... Part 9

 While going through my Daddy's things after he passed away, I found this handwritten list of things titled You Might Be a Country Boy If

You Might Be a Country Boy If...
by Bob Lawry

You ever made Jello, put the bowl in a bucket, and let it down in the well to set the Jello

You ever put a jar of milk in a bucket, and let it down in the well to keep it cool

You ever begged Mama and Daddy to let you stay all night with cousins on Saturday Night and Sunday

You ever stayed up Saturday night til midnight listening to the Grand Ole Opry on WSM Nashville, Tennessee