The title of today’s song is anticipation but I was think of it as the good old days song. The first part of the song, the anticipation part, was used on a ketchup commercial a few years ago. You might think that I’m going to share a story about my childhood. But this story is not about my childhood or anybody that I know. Today’s story is just a thought a had when I was watching TV.
Back in high school I did a term paper on Nazi Propaganda, I guess since then I have always been interested in WWII and I always wanted to know why the people of Germany would follow Hitler to their deaths. One night I was watching a program on the Nazi Youth. there were two Nazi youth organizations one for boys and one for girls. In a lot ways these where a lot like the boy and girl scouts they even when to summer camp. Their summer camp was almost like summer camp that our kids would go to. Like for instance the Hitler Youth boys would learn how to build a fire, shoot bows and arrows, do woodworking, go swimming with naked girls, go hiking, singing songs around a campfire,—-Wait did anyone notice the swimming with naked girls part? That’s right the Nazi boys camp would meet up with the Nazi girls camp and go swimming together naked. Why would the Nazi’s do this? The Nazi’s were really proud because at the end of one year, nearly 800 Nazi girls became pregnant. When they gave birth their babies were know as Hitler’s babies. I know it sounds unbelievable but this really happened.
The space above is there where I can put pictures but you can look these pictures up on the internet for yourself.—A week after I saw the Hitler Youth program another WWII program came on, this one was about Hitler’s invasion of Russia. In particular it was about the Battle of Leningrad, the program told of the suffering of the German soldiers during the harsh Russian winter. Meanwhile back in Berlin, Hitler is on the radio telling the German people how their brave soldiers were glad to fight to the death for the Fatherland. While I was watching this I thought what would a couple of German soldiers say to each other? Just imagine this conversation: ” Hans do you remember back in the good old days when we were warm, and we were back at the youth camp and swimming with naked girls? Hans how’s your hand feeling?” Hans replied ” It’s feeling a lot better since it fell off” Hans can you remember anyone telling us when we were swimming with naked girls, by the way in a few years you’ll be freezing to death in Russia. Hans said “Now that you mentioned it, no one told us that”. Yep those were the good old days.
Sometime it maybe best not to get everything you wish for. When you listen to this song you might think that poor Rick sure does need that girl. Yes Rick wants her bad and not only does he want her he deserves to have her instead of that friend of his. You can only hope that maybe someday Rick will get this girl.
I got some great news for Rick, I think I found Jessie’s girl! This girl is singing to Jessie and it sounds like she wants to break up with him, which is great news for Rick! But when Rick hears what this girl has to tell Jessie I’m thinking maybe Rick might what to reconsider on this girl. She says that she won’t cut fresh flowers for Jessie, which could be a big problem after all she works for him at Jessie’s Flower Shop. (I know if Jessie owns a flower shop, there’s a good change that he doesn’t like girls, but for the purpose of today’s song, we’ll say that he likes girls) Then she says she won’t keep the wine cold for Jessie, If you are beginning to feel sorry for Jessie, wait for what she next. She tells Jessie that she won’t change the sheets for him. Wait a minute Rick will she not change the sheets because there is no reason to change perfectly clean sheets! Rick you may want to rethink that whole loving him with that body idea of yours. Then she says she won’t put on cologne for Jessie, a girl that wears cologne, you didn’t see that coming did you, Rick? And finally she says that she won’t wait by the phone for Jessie, not only will she not talk to him on the phone I’m thinking she’s also not sending any really “good” pictures on her cell phone.
After listening to today’s song you might realize that always getting what you want, may not be that great of an idea. Sometimes it’s best to be happy with what you got.
If you don’t listen carefully to this song you think this is a song about Jesus after all they say Hallelujah a lot. But the former Beatle, George Harrison, is singing praises to Hindu gods. This is also known as the “Hare Krishna” song, I always thought that it was the Harry Krishna song but it turns that’s a different dude. To understand the meaning of the song you have to listen to what the background singers are singing, they start out at the first of the song singing Hallelujah several times but at about the halfway point they change Hallelujah to “Hare Krishna” they sing “Hare Krishna several times, then at the end song the backup singers do a Hindu chant. I can’t understand all the words their singing so I looked it up on the internet. At the end of the song they sing; Krishna, Krishna: Hare, Hare: Guru Brahma: Guru Vishnu: Guru Devo: Maheshwara: Guru Sakshaat:
If George Harrison wants to move to India and become a Hare Krishna I suppose he has the right to do that. After all George is one of the Beatles gods. What I disagree with is when Christians take this song and say , well if we take all that Hindu stuff out of it, we can make it into a Christian song. I haven’t done anything on Jim Nabors since his death because I was waiting for today’s song to come up. This is Gomer singing My Sweet Lord without all that Hindu stuff.
So leave out some background words and there is suddenly there’s a Christian song that used to be a Hindu song. What’s wrong with mixing Christianity with Hinduism? It seems that today there is a lot of Hinduism being mixed in with today’s Christians. I don’t know much about Hinduism but I know enough to see how the belief in reincarnation is really popular with today’s Christians. For instance, those brown people in Mexico need to stay in Mexico and suffer and when they die, in their next life they may be born a white, English speaking, American. That is the Republican plan for citizenship. Those starving people in Africa, well they can just go ahead and die, maybe their next life will be better. Today’s Christians will tell that’s not what they believe, but that belief would explain much of their actions. This belief justifies racism, and the war on the poor.
You may think that this song is a summer song but when it’s the coldest night of the year and your furnace goes out and you are almost frozen, then you know why Glen is so happy that the heat is on. In the summertime if your air conditioning goes out at least you can cool down a little by getting in front of a fan. But when your cold in the middle of the night all you can do is put more cover on, wishing that the heat was on.
When I was growing up at the start of every winter my brother and I would help daddy start up the furnace. Maybe my brother and me were not much help when we were so little, but looking back now Mama and Daddy were teaching us that you should work for what you got. If you want heat then you don’t just flip a switch there is work to do before the heat comes on. Our furnace was in the attic, it took more work than just opening a door in the hall. The first thing to do is to change the filter, on our furnace this is not like today where there a filter that just slides into a slot, out furnace used a roll filter that was inside the furnace. To replace the filter you first opened up the panel on the inside was a curved metal frame with a filter wrapped around it. One side of the filter was clean but the other side was super dirty. To replace the filter we would remove the metal frame, take it in the front yard take off the old filter then take out the new filter out of the box and unroll the filter then we would place the old filter next to the roll filter making sure it would be the same length as the old filter, then we took a pair of scissors and cut the new to the right length. Next we when back in the attic and try to put the frame back into the slots that the metal glides which also held the filter in place. The problem was there was about 5 different ways to put the filter holder back together and by the time that I measured the new filter I forgot how it went back together. After I finally got the filter in place, the next thing to do was lite the pilot. In order to lite the pilot, we had a 2 foot long metal rod with a slot on the end of it. The slot on the end of the rod was there to place a match on the end of it then lite the match push the pilot lite button in with one hand and with the other hand take the rod with the burning match on the end of it, and put it where you think the pilot is before the match goes out. That is how we did it back in the good old days.
Today I have my own house but instead of the furnace in the attic I have what is know as a package unit outside. The contains both air condition and a natural gas furnace. The other day I was sitting in my chair which located next to a vent. I thought there was something wrong and when I put my hand over the vent there was cold air coming out which was not good. I then went outside to see what was wrong. To explain what was going wrong and why it was cold air instead of warm , I need to tell the big change in how today’s furnace works which is quite different from the good old days. How a furnace works is really simple. When the thermostat calls for heat, the gas valve opens the gas coming out of the burner is lite by the pilot. Then the blower goes on and you have heat. The air from the blower does not blow over the burner, that would blow out the flame, the burner heats up the heat exchanger, which is made out several sheets of metal, the air from the blower first goes though the heat exchanger into the ductwork which goes into the house heating the whole house. How could you improve on that? The answer was to change the way the burner works. In good old days burners inside a furnace looked and operated very much like a burner on a propane gas grill, little blue flames coming out of a bunch holes. The more little blue flames the more heat you would get. Today’s furnaces have what is know as an induction motor. What the induction motor does is what I Think is quite amazing. No longer does a furnace has a burner with a lot of little blue flames, today there are only 3 to 6 flames, but each of the flames are impressive. The draft from the induction motor draws the flames through a portal all the way into the heat exchanger resulting in a hot burning flame. This is far more productive than the old method of several small flames. I went outside and opened the panel and it was easy to tell what was wrong. My unit has 5 portals the problem was only one had flame. I thought I could get my long lighter and light the others, then I thought that may not be a good idea, then I came up with the idea of just blowing on the portal so I blew on it and a large whoos happened well instead of just scaring me the other 4 ignited since it was working and it was dark I closed the panel and went to bed. At about 3:30 in the morning I woke up and the house was cold so I put my shoes on, went outside, blew on the flame which once again ignited all the portals and I went back to bed. The next day after breakfast I took the panel off once again. What I thought could be wrong is there must be an obstruction somewhere that would interrupt the flow of gas for a brief moment, this would result in the 4 portals going out. I took out the induction motor and blew it out with compressed air from my air compressor, took apart each of portals where I could blow them out, blew air everywhere I could, I put everything back together and guess what it worked whatever it was that was blocking the gas flow must had blown out. I was very proud that my heat was once again on.
Don’t wish me Merry Xmas nor Happy Holidays is the first line of this Christmas song. I was a mover for several years and one thing that I never ever did was to box up Christmas decorations and then mark on the box Xmas Deco. I saw boxes marked Xmas all the time and whenever I saw them I would think of this song. Writing Xmas on a box was taking Christ out of Christmas. It’s not just using Xmas as an lazy abbreviation, back in the day on store fronts and signs storeowners would place Merry Xmas obvious that it would offend Christians. It’s not like they haven’t heard the song before back then it was a real popular song.
The song also says don’t wish me Happy Holidays. I’ve always had a problem with this. Yes saying Xmas does directly take Christ out of Christmas, but I always thought when someone wishes you Happy Holidays they were referring to the Holidays, and the Holidays are Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years day not just Christmas. I believe they saying Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year, the phrase Happy Holidays covered ALL the Holidays. The big retailors would love for us to forget the other Holidays and think of nothing else but to sell us something for Christmas. Happy Holidays also can refer to Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, this is how President Obama got into trouble with the ” Trump base”. They were offended because President Obama didn’t say Merry Christmas instead of Happy Holidays. Now President Trump says Merry Christmas with a lot of pride and arrogance his base is super proud that we have a President that’s brave enough to say Merry Christmas. The church people say that what President Trump is just like today’s song he is putting Christ back into Christmas. That would be great if that were really what he intents by saying Merry Christmas. However I believe that President Trump is not praising Christ by saying Merry Christmas in truth, President Trump is praising himself! Who are these “church people” in the Trump base, well read this carefully because I know who these “church people” are. Back during the summer of 2016 during the campaign Candidate Trump spoke before a large group of pastors. Time and time again Candidate Trump referring to his audience as “you religious people “. After the speech, someone must had told him that the one thing that pastors hate is being called “religious”. A few days later instead of You Religious People Candidate Trump starts to call them the People of Faith. Why not call them “born again Christians”? Do you remember the 76 election where Jimmy Carter called himself “born again” and all that followed after that? Donald Trump didn’t want be get involved with something like that again, so they picked what they thought would be a safe thing to call them, after all calling someone a person of faith you might think that would be a compliment. But think about it if you now call yourself one of the People of Faith then you might not realize it but you just took Christ out of your name. That’s right the people that shout the loudest about putting Christ back into Christmas have taken Christ out of their name because that’s what Donald Trump wants them to be know as. President Trump and his advisors had no idea what they did at the time but what they unaware did is to divide the “Born Again Christians from the People of Faith. The Born Again Christians are followers of Christ on the other hand the People of Faith are followers of Trump who may go to church. As a Born Again Christian I believe you might could call this what we now call “a God thing” the People of Faith would not agree, but then you have to consider they are willing to give up the name of Christ just because of politics. Do you know the best way that you can put Christ into Christmas. It’s through your actions not weather you tell someone Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays. —-The last line for today is Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
Today is December 7 that means today is what we now call Pearl Harbor Day. The attack on Pearl Harbor was 76 years ago today. Today’s song is Anchors Aweigh, I always thought the song title was Anchors Away, but it turns out that’s it’s Anchors Aweigh. My guess why they call it aweigh is because anchors are really heavy, of coarse I could be wrong. I think you have to ask someone that’s in the Navy they should know or I guess you could look it up on the internet. There are a lot of different versions of the song, this one is my favorite because it shows current Navy personal on a ship. This video is really good, until the end where their standing in front of their ship and they unroll a banner that reads Go Navy Beat Army. Now since today is Pearl Harbor Day when you see this part just imagine that the banner says Go Navy Beat Japan.
For several years I went to church with a man who was there on December 7, 1941. Every year Brother Scott would tell his story about his experience on a ship, I don’t remember which ship Brother Scott was on, I guess I should because I heard his story, which he didn’t change a word, every year for a least 20 years. The thing that everyone remembers about Brother Scott was how he was such a snappy dresser. Brother Scott wore every Sunday a plaid leisure suit with a super wide “beautiful tie” a 3 inch wide white belt with a silver buckle and of coarse he always had on his polished white shoes. It is possible that all his leisure suits were homemade. If you want know how it was in 1941 you could ask Brother Scott, if you want to know how really cool men dressed in 1973 you could look at Brother Scott. It won’t be long until all of the World War 2 veterans are gone and their will only be memories not anyone who could tell how it was like to really be there.
Listening to this song today, you might say that most of Hank’s rowdy friends may have settle down a bit too much. Hank friends, in this song are George Jones, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson. Of the four only Kris Kristofferson is still living. The other three may have settled down way too much. Just yesterday I was listening to music and a song by Johnny Cash came on the steaming service, it was from a live performance at Asbury Park New Jersey. Johnny said a few words before he sung Sunday Morning Coming Down, Johnny said this next song was written by a good friend of his, Kris Kristofferson, who had a birthday the other day, Johnny then said, Kris was 81. Johnny Cash thought that was funny when he said Kris was 81. This might had seemed funny back it 1985 when Johnny said that, but I just looked up Kris Kristofferson on the internet and it said Kris Kristofferson is today, and you may had guessed this, Kris Kristofferson is now 81 years old.
I was thinking back to my school days and come to think about it a lot of my friends that I when to school with have died. In my senior class there was about 450 students. I graduated high school in 1980, in two years that will be forty years ago! Back in 2000 we had our 20 year high school reunion. A few weeks before our reunion, we heard the news that Bruce Brown had died. Bruce wrote in our senior yearbook that it was his dream to become a doctor. Bruce was one of the smartest people I’ve ever met and it turns out that Bruce did become a doctor it fact he was an obstetrician. Bruce also loved to fly. A little while before our reunion Bruce was flying his small plane when he experience engine failure, and crashed his plane killing Bruce, his wife and his young children. At his doctor’s office people placed a long banner where a lot of the more than 3,000 babies that Dr. Bruce delivered into our world sighed their name and whatever else they would like to put on the banner. Since our 20th reunion many more of my classmates have died, I know of five that were at the reunion that had since died. Sad to say but I know there are more that I’m not aware of. A lot has changed since my 20th reunion, for instance there wasn’t face book way back in 2000. Today old people, like me, look on face book to find our old classmates, not because we liked these people in high school, we’re just wandering if they are still alive. —–Join me again tomorrow for another song and story. It may be a Christmas song or maybe not.
Today’s song the pistol is the Devils Right Hand would be a controversial song if it were out today. Imagine calling a gun the Devil’s right hand today, saying anything at all about gun control at any church of today. They would call you names like their favorite word, liberal then they would laugh at you. Today church people firmly believe in their 2nd commandment rights. Doesn’t everyone remember when Charlton Heston walked down the mountain at the end of that movie and gave the people the Ten Commandments. Then years later God made Charlton Heston the spokesman for the NRA. If you ask most church people, they will tell that Jesus joined the NRA, I can’t find that in my Bible so I guess next Sunday I will have to ask someone exactly where in the Bible this happened. Good ol’ Chuck Heston in a famous speech proclaimed they will have to pry his gun from his cold dead hand, and the crowd went wild. I just feel sorry for that poor mortician you know he had to earn his pay on that job!
Back when I taught the singles class in Sunday School, there was an older man in his middle 60s in my class. Don had a lot of health problems, he only had one hand his other hand was a hook. One day my pastor called me and told me that Don had died. He said they found Don sitting in his living room chair holding his Bible in the one hand he had. I was wandering, Christian friend, how would you like for them to find your dead body holding a Bible or would you rather they find you holding your gun? And I have another question I want you to think about. Suppose that the government put a ban on abortions but in order to get this ban their would also be a ban on assault rifles. I guess most would use the standard reply that the NRA has taught them. they would say assault rifles don’t kill people. It seems their pro-life beliefs only extend to unborn babies everyone else, well if they die then they die, the pro-lifers are not going to do anything to stop anyone but babies from being killed. Of coarse both in Las Vegas and the Texas church shootings there were pregnant women who both the women and their unborn babies were killed. I believe that life, all life should be protected any way we can. Before you answer maybe you should ask yourself would Jesus defend assault rifles? If you can find scripture that supports Jesus defending assault rifles I would like to read those scriptures, so just leave them in the comments where everyone can read them.
If you know today’s song you will quickly find that there is something wrong. Instead of the words,like a drifter I was born to walk alone, they say ,like a hobo I was born to walk alone. Why did they change the word hobo to drifter? Did the National Association of Hobos object to this song so they made them change it? Or did they change the word because they didn’t believe the kids of today would know what a hobo is, so they changed it to drifter? The answer to why they changed the words, and I find this a little funny, the song heard here was from an album Whitesnake recorded in 1982. It was in 1987 that Whitesnake re-recorded the song and made their popular video, which was when the song became popular. When they recorded the song in 1987, the lead singer, who also wrote the song decided to change the word hobo to drifter because he was afraid that when some people heard the song they would misheard the word hobo for the word homo. He didn’t want any chance of that happening so he chanced the word to drifter. I’m not making this up!
Now I’m going to tell you about my favorite hobo movie. Not only is this my favorite hobo movie, it’s the only hobo movie I ever saw . I could be wrong but I think their are more homo movies than hobo movies. But if you want to see a good hobo movie I would recommend The Emperor of the North. This is the movie trailer for this movie.
Isn’t it amazing how just by changing one word in a song could lead to so much discussion!
A Few years ago me and Granddaddy were sitting in his living room when Granddaddy just out of the blue said ” My daddy build that magazine rack” I said something back and then then Granddaddy said ” my daddy build that magazine rack out of orange crates”. My granddaddy’s daddy was a country doctor in Keota, Oklahoma who made house calls in a horse and buggy. Dr. Bruce Inman would not gotten paid in cash, because no one had any money. People would pay my Great-Granddaddy with whatever they had that could be a chicken or a few eggs, maybe some vegetables out of their garden. That’s how people survived back in the Great Depression, Dr. Bruce ,that’s what everyone called him, made that magazine rack out of orange crates because he needed a magazine rack and the only he would get one is to build it himself out of anything he had. If I took the magazine rack to the Antiques Roadshow , they would tell that’s an example of the arts and crafts movement. It’s really an example of the if you want it, you have to make it movement. Todays song is one of the best examples of how it really was to live through the Great Depression.
The big problem with begging someone for a dime, during the Great Depression, is that whoever you asked for a dime would say “I was just abought to ask you for one.” Today’s kids with their cell phones, video games, computers have no clue how it was living during the Great Depression, come to think of it I can’t imagine how it really was. I can tell one thing I’m sure of, that’s during the Great Depression there was not a bunch of preacher all over the country preaching that Jesus wants you to rich. How is it that today Jesus wants us to be rich but in the Great Depression he didn’t make everyone rich. Today the “People of Faith” do their best to take away health care from the poor. In the Great Depression everyone was “the poor” and they believed in taking care of each other. Has Jesus changed since the Great Depression like the “People of Faith” claim? I’m not a member of Trump’s “People of Faith” I’m not ashamed to say that I’m a born again Christian. I believe that we should learn from history not ignore it. If you will read yesterday’s song then you might see that I have a theme for this Christmas and the theme is to be thankful for what God has given to you and this Christmas give to others more than ever.