2008 Soap Box Archives

Reflections on Turning Seventy-Two

This week I will be celebrating my seventy-second birthday and I use the term celebrate loosely, as I have no plans to have some kind of a blowout or any of the other things we usually associate with the word.

I will probably spend a quiet day at home, maybe hitting a few golf balls, popping off a few rounds at the shooting range, or if the day is the right so I may go to the big pond and match wits with the fish.

To say that a lot has changed in my 72 years would be a little ridiculous since my generation has seen the advent of television, penicillin, jet aircraft and satellite technology.

I have experienced the coming of the interstate highway, the first man on the moon and a thousand other things that seemed all but impossible on October 28, 1936 at around two o'clock in the morning when eighteen-year-old LaRue Hammonds Daniels gave birth to a baby boy at James Walker Memorial Hospital in Wilmington, North Carolina.

My dad, William Carlton Daniels, was 19 years old and working for humble wages. The Dodgers were still in Brooklyn and the Empire State Building was still the tallest in the world.

The world was basically at peace but there was a demented paperhanger barnstorming the beer halls of Germany preaching hatred and class envy, a sad fact which would explode into the Second World War a few short years later.

Hemlines were well below the knee, a 12 once bottle of Pepsi Cola cost a nickel and in those semi innocent days before mass pollution, the night sky was clear and full of stars and that buttery Carolina moon shined so brightly you could almost read a comic book by it.

The family sat around the radio and listened to the likes of Fibber McGee and Molly, The Jack Benny Show and the scariest thing that ever graced the airwaves, a chiller called Inner Sanctum.

The first house I remember living in had electricity but no running water and the sanitary facility was a short walk from the back door, complete with last year's copy of the Sears & Roebuck catalog, which spent it's dotage in the little house behind the big house, growing thinner by the day and tantalizing the imaginations of little boys who would sit there ogling the wondrous things on the rapidly disappearing pages.

It was a day when you could drink the water out of the creek and many families slept with their doors unlocked.

I remember the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the long and bloody aftermath that followed, when America was at her patriotic best, straining every nerve to be victorious in a war we knew we had to win, for the survival of America and the good of planet Earth.

I remember graduating with the class of 1955, all twenty-two of us, walking down the aisle to the melancholy strains of "Pomp and Circumstance" and out into a world I knew very little about.

I'll never forget when a radical newcomer named Elvis kicked down the door and turned global entertainment upside down.

I remember discovering that God had given me some musical talent and developing the desire to spend the rest of my life pursuing it.

I remember the first time I laid eyes on my beautiful wife, Hazel, and the first time I ever held my newborn son, Charlie, in my arms.

I remember arriving in Nashville in April of 1967 with a wife and baby, the clutch out of my car, a twenty-dollar bill in my pocket and a burning desire to be a part of what was going on in Music City.

I'll never forget the night that Martina McBride walked on our stage in the middle of a show to tell me that I'd been invited to become a member of The Grand Ole Opry.

I'll never forget the day that radical Islam declared war on the rest of the world as crazed fanatics flew planes into American commercial and military icons, changing the world forever.

These are but a thimble full of the memories and experiences that make up my life. I've seen a lot and learned a lot.

I've learned that the most important thing in a man's life is an acceptance of the salvation of Jesus Christ.

I've learned that the love of a good woman is worth much more than gold and is eternal.

I've learned that children are a precious gift of God and should be treated accordingly.

I've learned that forgiveness is truly divine and liberating and that a good hug can heal a lot of hurt.

I've learned that everyone, no matter how humble their circumstances has a real chance of making something out of their lives if they're willing to work hard enough and not give up.

Yes I've learned a lot in these seventy-two years. Maybe one of these days I'll even learn to play this dadblamed fiddle.

Pray for our troops.

What do you think?

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels

 

©Copyright The Charlie Daniels Band