Hope you're having a good day, Mary. Mom was really something. Nothing slowed her down, not even a stroke. She had so much energy and loved to laugh and tell stories. And sing - we had an intercom radio Daddy put in for her so her country music station could follow her, volume at full blast, wherever she went from room to room, singing along to Hank Williams or Ernest Tubb. She also sang in the choir at church but sang more with the radio. When she was a girl, she and two of her sisters would sing on the front porch of their house loud enough for the people at the farm next to theirs to hear them. One sister taught herself to play a guitar.

How she met my father - she and one of her sisters had moved to my hometown to live with their oldest, married sister. They worked at the little family owned department store in town and worked as waitresses at a juke joint in another town nearby. Daddy came in to have a beer after work and another guy from our town came in too. This guy kept spilling beer on the counter and Mama finally told him if he didn't stop she was going to wash his face with the beer soaked rag. I think Daddy, who was very quiet and shy, liked her feistiness.