Redneck Review!
No. 164 - 6/11/2018
Looking back to a "Time to move on" resolution in last week's review, and looking ahead to Father's day coming up, a poem taken from an earlier Chronicle article under the title LET FREEDOM RING was submitted here.  Actually, it was the first half of the poem, "To Fathers from Sons."    Following is the rest of that poem, "To sons from Fathers:"
“Hey kids. I've watched you thrive and grow,  From cuddly babes in your mother's arms, To involved teenagers on the go,  Then grown adults with your mother's charms.  Sometimes were rough, some days were fun,  Some news was good, some almost bad,  Some nights were long, before you were done,  Sometimes heartbreak, other times so glad.  So as days roll by to Father's Day,  A hint to you for a gift for me,  Give it every year  'til your hair turns gray,  And I'll treasure it throughout eternity...  Just make us proud that you're our kin,  Work hard, be fair, be honest too,  Stay in God's grace, steer clear of sin,  Be the best in everything you do.  And when life is done, and with your prayer,  To help us muddle our way "up there,"  Down with pride we'll look on all of you,  Whose lives guarantee you'll join us too. 
The "Hey kids" above, and the "Dear Dad" at the end of last week's review came to my attention accidentally as I was reviewing clippings saved by my mother from a series of articles written by me in the mid 1980's entitled  LET FREEDOM RING.  That series might be considered a fore runner of the  RED NECK REVIEW  that has been my effort now for over three years, weekly since #1 written April 23, 2015. My intention then was to pass onto parents and older peers the information and articles I had been exposed to in my effort to keep up with current events as a social studies teacher at Prairie High School at the time
Little did I know at the time, my mother was cutting out and saving some of those articles, and kept them in a folder.  After her death Christmas eve in 1994,  my sister Judy found the folder as she was going through her  belongings, and some few years later, she have me the folder and mentioned at the time I should organize them and put them in some kind of book form!
Well, they laid on my desk for a decade or two until some months ago when I picked up the folder and started looking through the collected articles.  Some were dated, some had her comments on them, but were in no particular order.  So a couple of months ago, a goal of mine became organizing those articles in the best way possible and then cutting, pasting them in a form which would fit on regular 8"x11" paper. The end result was and is a 52 page booklet entitled LET FREEDOM RING put together by the Cottonwood Chronicle, and available from there.
It was from one of those booklets that I reprinted the story of the "lone senior" whose sudden appearance helped his group win the "Tug of War" which was discussed in RNR #161. And which was mentioned as an example of the impact a single individual can have on events around him or her.  And it was from that same booklet that I found THE TWO SIDES OF FATHER'S DAY poem that I had written in honor of that day back in the 1980's. 
A final comment here.  Skimming through the pages of the LET FREEDOM RING articles which I now have before me,  I am amazed at two things:  First, how much life has changed in the past thirty plus years,  and  second, how some of the articles and the pictures they painted about the future HAVE COME TRUE!  Once again it should be remembered by all of us that  "Those who do not learn from mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them." 
Jake Wren

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