If the Good Lord's Willin' and the Creek Don't Rise...

We weren't able to do our 'entertain the folks older than us' thing because of the aforementioned bug. Donna is feeling better now and we have a jam session date coming up this Saturday so maybe 'things are getting better all the time.'

It's strange, the different ways different things affect us as we trundle along lifes' highway in our carriage of life. I learned a friend from 'long ago and far away' went to the great jam session in the sky a few weeks ago. His name was Chester Smith and, unless you are into radio stations and tv stations acquisitions and very old timey disk jockeying in Modesto, you may not be too familiar with his life. I won't go far imto his history except to say I liked him. I watched a couple of his DJ guest programs at KTRB Radio, Modesto, back in the 40s and 50s.

Thanks to him sponsoring many well known Hillbilly (aka; Country and Western) recording artists when we were young, I was able to shake hands with Hank Snow, Del Reeves, Johnny and Jack and Kitty Wells, Marty Robbins, Lefty Frizzell, Terry Preston (aka,-Ferlin Husky and/or Simon Crum) and I was among the three naughty teens who shared a bottle of Seagram Seven whiskey with Hank Williams in the parking lot of the Riverbank Clubhouse in the year of our lord, 1951, during a break at his appearance there.

I added pictures of Chester at his desk, Chester with Hank Williams,(Hank is in his brown suit) Chester with Hank Snow, Chester with Merle Haggard and a photo of Lefty Frizzell.

Chester built a drive-in restaurant in Little Okie, the Airport District, in Modesto so us Okies would have a place to enjoy cherry cokes! Yay!

In 1992 a Modesto girl arranged a Little Okie re-union at the Legion Hall, in the Legion Park in Modesto. I lived in Orland at the time but I packed up Mi Espousa (a bit more Mex lingo here) and we toodled on down to Modesto to eat, drink and see Mary, the gal who thunk it up. Guess who showed up? Chester Smith. He was a millionaire by then but he remembered his roots!

And did I forget to mention that I and Mi Espousa have a few home made videos on YouTube? Well,(I say that a lot, just like President Reagan)we do and they are at JC and Donna Lee so go on over and take a look. Of the ten videos there now, eight are my own songs and poems. We're new at this video stuff so be as kind to us as you can. The link is at the bottom of this post.Voila!

Well,(there I go again) so much for the presidential campaign and so much for Chester and so much for this blog post and so much for y'all! Have a nice day and I'll see you again sometimes 'if the good Lord's willing and the creek don't rise!'