Some people say that we are who we are because of our environment and genes, but things have happened to me that lead me to believe that there is a something more directing our lives on this small planet. There are connections that are hard to explain. Connections with the people we meet and the places we live and visit. When I paused and looked back on my life I found lots of things that seemed divinely directed. A lot of them were not necessarily about me, but about others and I only pla...

Blue skies of August bring to mind,carefree days of my childhood past.Memories I had almost lost to time.Blue skies of August bring them back at last.Gone are the days when I played till dark,and sometimes ran through the woods at night.Not a worry in the world as if I were in a park.Blue skies of August seemed very bright.Staying out late, watching the meter shower,and all the bright stars of the Milky Way.I would stay...

Drawn to Darkness is fiction, drawn however from experiences as a child growing up in the 50's and living in the mountains. The cave along the Piney River is real and I explored it as I played there alone. The cave in the book is totally fictitious, but so much like the many caves found in the mountains of Tennessee. This book is about exploration and adventure, about young people having fun and getting to know each other.I have always heard that true stories are stranger than ficti...

Some of the events are based on true stories that occurred during 1950 and 1951. Details and most of the names are fictional. The Author, only nine years old at the time, going fishing with his Grandfather at the Trout Pond, and seeing him at the small gas station, searching for memories of 65 years ago. He remember his Grandmother better and spent a lot of time climbing the trees in her front yard and attending the family reunions. He witnessed the burned out railroad bridge and played ba...

Brian sat on the pew listening to his father preach, just like every other Sunday. The voice he heard did not sound like his fathers, a voice he had not heard before. "Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being?" Brian understood that the "house" referred to him, and he stood up in the middle of his father's sermon and went to the altar. The ...

From time to time it's good to stop and pause. These poems were written when I took time to pause and think about things that are less serious than life. It helps to relax and think about different things. I believe that the more variety we have in our thinking, the better we will be as a person.I also like to wait and see if God has anything to show me when I take these special times to pause. Writing is not so much for the reader as it is for myself, as the writer and the joy that...

Forty years of caving keeps me thinking a lot about the sport. In this book, I share not only what I have learned and experienced, but also what a few others have shared about caves and how they also became interested in the sport. Most of the caves discussed in this book are in the Southeast with a few elsewhere. Detail exploration and mapping are given for Pettyjohn Cave in Georgia and Pumphouse Cave in Tennessee.Caves have been used for everything from fallout shelters to mushroo...

Bobby was sixteen when he fell in love for the first time. He walked Ruth home after school, took her to the movies, and spent more time with the tall brunette than with his other friends. Bobby was always cracking jokes and having fun, but he managed to stay out of trouble. His father was the preacher of a medium-sized Baptist church, as well as a butcher at the Piggly Wiggly Store. They lived in the small town of Providence, Kentucky, the year was 1956, and everyone knew everyone else.

Did you ever wonder why we enter dark holes in the ground? Could it be an instinct from our distance past, or just plain curiosity? We once lived in caves and some still do. From the distance past we find that man has always used caves. For shelter or the safety of the rock that surrounds us close like our mother’s womb. There is a strange confront that we feel when lying in a tight passage or sitting in a dark cave passage. Maybe it is because of the quietness of the place and just being ...

Life consist of interruptions, some are small and others are major. All make life immensely interesting.

In 1984, while visiting relatives in Tennessee, they told me of their water supply, a pump house at the base of a large hill where they pumped water from a cave lake located below. A previous owner had used cinder blocks to block the entrance to a cave in the side of the hill and built a small dam to back up the stream flowing from the cave. As caving was my hobby, I became very interested and at once wanted to investigate this underground lake. This was too good to pass up. I persuaded on...

Clair pried on the lid of the box that had rusted shut. Her black hair hung over her eyes as she concentrated on her prize.Her mother stepped on the porch, "What are you doing to our rock doorstop?""It's not a rock it's a box!""My goodness, I plowed that thing up over in Grassy Cove. When we lived next to the old School House."After years of being shoved around by the door, hints of metal on the corner begin to be visible under the dirt and rust."I notice...