The Chatter Box
By Deborah Bennett

I heard John Denver's famous song, "Country Roads Take Me Home," on the radio recently and was immediately transported back in time to an era when sitting in the back of a pickup truck rambling down a dirt road on Sunday afternoon was an adventure.

I can still see a truckload of youth holding on so tightly to the side of the vehicle that their knuckles turned white. I can still hear the shouts of laughter released with each jolt and rise and fall of the truck as it hit potholes, sunk into mud up to the tire rims and rattled across washboard ripples that made our teeth chatter and our voices vibrate. I can still smell the sweet aroma of the honeysuckle bushes lining the sides of the road and hear the calls of the Bob White from the thick undergrowth as we passed by.

I can still feel the warmth of the sun on my face, the sting of the hot sand thrown up by the tires on my arms and the wind tangling my hair. I recall with gratitude the vehicle stopping in the middle of the road to allow us to jump out and grab some blackberries from the bushes growing along the ditches or plums from nearby trees. And if the driver sped off to leave us running after the vehicle for a short distance, that was even better.

Do youth today find riding down dirt roads in the back of a pickup truck exciting? I doubt it, and that is too bad. I believe it is the simple things in life that mean the most. The memories you make, not the things you accumulate, are the things that are really priceless - like riding down a dirt road with a truckload of friends.

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Happy birthday this week to: John Herrington III, Jonathan Hall, Nicolette Schwonke, Rosalie Dwelle, Trey Black, Barbara Burke and Ana Joiner.

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Celebrating wedding anniversaries this week are: Mr. and Mrs. Jim Waters.

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Military Active Duty List: SPC 4 Travis D. Motes, 1st Calvary Division, Camp Taji, Iraq; Capt. Donald Slade Burke, Travis Air Force Base, Fairfield, Calif.; SPC Grade E4 Arthur Lamont Milton Jr., HHC 1-36 Infantry Support, Friedberg, Germany; Staff Sgt. Gilbert C. Sheppard III, 48th Brigade, 118th Field Artillery, Ft. Stewart; Petty Officer 2nd Class Jamie A. Yager, U.S. Navy, Maryland; Petty Chief Officer Andy D. Crosby, U.S. Navy, Elroy Destroyer, Norfolk, Va.; Stephanie Crosby, R.N., U.S. Navy, Lafayette Destroyer; LCPL Dwain "Cade" Lee, 1st Marine Division Combat Service Support Group II Security Element, ArRamadi, Iraq; Jimmy Cooper, U.S. Army National Guard, 878th Engineering Battalion-Augusta, Persian Gulf ; 1st Lt. J.R. Taylor, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, Iraq; SPC. Daniel Stuart, 18th MEDCOM, 121 General Hospital, Seoul, Korea; Capt. Andrew P. Thomas, U.S. Marines, 2nd Marine Division, F.A.S.T. Company, Yorktown, VA; Sgt. 1st Class Steven Yager, 362nd Sig. Company, Korea; MM3 Jeffrey Sweat, U.S. Navy, USS Kauffman, MM3 59/E-Division, A-Gang, Norfolk, Va.; Cpl. Larry Lamont Clark, U.S. Marine Corp, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C. Bagdad, Iraq; Khan Young, U.S. Navy, U.S.S. Kitty Hawk, Persian Gulf; Robert Milton Jr., E-3, U.S. Army, Ft. Stewart, Hinesville, Ga., Mission Kuwait; SFC Ronnie Perryman, E-7, Georgia Army National Guard, Battery A, 118th Field Artillery Regiment, 48th Brigade Combat Team; Arnold R. Mosley, 2nd Lt., U.S. Air Force, Randolph AFB, Texas; and Debra A. Mosley, Tech. Sgt., U.S. Air Force, Randolph AFB, Texas.