Just Plain Luck

“Hey if it wasn’t for bad luck y’all, Oh, I wouldn’t have no luck at all.” Ray Charles

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I’ve been thinking about luck while sitting around nursing a gimpy leg from too much weed pulling. I’m having a conference with myself…the kind that leads nowhere but to muddled confusion.

In my misery of immobility I’m left with only philosophic analytics to arrive at some standard of comparison that distinguishes good luck from bad luck. I purposely avoid interjecting the Providential aspect into the discussion. But I’m leery. The sign on that door says, “Knock gently.”

So far, I’ve concluded that luck can go either way, a cosmic tossup between the two extremes. Here’s my logic:

For example, my condition could be seen as a byproduct of luck, not work, either good and bad. Good in that I won’t need amputation of the leg to alleviate the pain, but bad because I will miss a beach walk. So, who can say which adjective best describes this situation? The conundrum baffles the mind.

There are all sorts of luck. Some swirls in the air we breathe, others in the things we do. Luck’s everywhere. What would it look like if we could see it? We wouldn’t recognize it, I’m sure. It comes dressed in disguise. It slips in silently, does its work and leaves. Most of us would mistake it for something it’s not. Like opportunity, which often comes dressed in overalls.

We use other adjectives to describe what’s indescribable. Like ‘dumb’ luck. What does this mean? Is luck so random we call it stupid? Or is it simply silent and mute? You have to look closely to find luck.

And what’s ‘blind’ luck all about? If Ray Charles were still around we could ask his opinion. He wrote and sang:

Tell ya a slow horse and a fast woman
Hey, hey, hey lord they sure did let me fall
That’s why I say, ah…
Hey if it wasn’t for bad luck y’all
Oh! I wouldn’t have no luck at all.

But now y’all, to lose your sight at age 7, what would that look like: good luck or bad? But what happened? He learned piano by the braille system, one hand at a time, got famous and left a legacy. One might conclude that luck and hard work are inseparable. Luck always needs the long view, not the short one.

I had a wonderful mother, lucky me. But was the obverse true? She shoved me out of the door for piano lessons as a kid. No kid at 10 wants to spend afternoons running scales on a piano when they could be bike riding or shooting marbles. What was bad luck for me then has been good luck for 65 years. I wish I could tell her that now.

Now I don’t admit to being a musical prodigy like Ray, a fact that was obvious when I picked up the violin at age 72. My audience was the dog who howled every time the bow stroked the strings; and the outside flowers wilted in bitter protest. Luck didn’t follow me here.

We use the term, ‘lady luck’ as if women were the personification of fortune. Which, in staying with my thesis, could be classified as either good or bad luck. A lot of life is a matter of perspective. But most men have had both sides of luck where women are concerned. Such experiences are private matters, unless you are nominated for the Supreme Court.

Is it possible to recognize luck? Perhaps. But typically not at the moment. It usually smiles or frowns on us down the road when we look back. How lucky are we to have married well, or to have chosen the perfect business, amiable friends and good health?

Is there such a thing as ‘average’ luck? Probably yes, simply because it’s taken for granted. I think breathing might be one of these under-valued benefits, not to mention children and certainly cinnamon toast in the morning. The list is long.

We’re all going to get lucky today. But the sign on the road out of Eden reminds us that luck can go both ways. Which will it be today? We’ll find out soon enough.

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Just plain luck? You decide. But maybe a better description for being lucky is being blessed.


Bud Hearn
September 28, 2018

Good People

“He’s good people.”

Maybe it’s not the best English, but you’ve heard it said this way if you grew up in almost any small town in the South. And you know what it means.

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Terry Toole is owner and publisher of my weekly hometown newspaper, The Miller County Liberal. He graciously publishes my Weakly Post along with all the other news of the good and not so good people of Colquitt and Miller County, Georgia.

Now don’t let the word ‘Liberal’ fool you. The paper leans about as far to the right as a pine sapling after an encounter with a tornado. It’s the kind of paper that will step on your toes, look you in the eye and say it to your face: “Pull for Colquitt or pull out.” Straight talk.

Terry also writes a weekly column, Up the Creek without a Paddle, and we share opposite pages of the paper. He’s on 6, I’m on 7. We’re sandwiched in after the obituaries and the fishing report. Our respective positions are sort of like sitting across the aisle from one another in the Colquitt United Methodist Church. Separate but equally committed to newsworthy journalism.

Metaphorical aisles of separation are everywhere in small towns. Opinions differ in matters of religion as well as ideology of any sort. In small towns, politics will separate friends and families as surely as Jesus separates sheep from goats, and county lines will guarantee there’s no consensus on which high school has the best football team.

A couple of weeks ago Terry wrote an article about his frantic weekend schedule of balancing his time between attending birthdays of the aged and the funerals of others. He went to all of them. Why? Because he’s ‘good people’ and lives among the ‘good people’ crowd.

Think about it…just two words describe the essence of folks. Make no mistake, South Georgia folks are born talkers, never at a loss of words. In spite of the brevity of the description, it’s quite adequate. Like hearing, “He’s a character.” Now, just what is a ‘character?’ Clearly it’s a catch-all word used when someone defies description…it says everything and nothing at the same time.

The ‘good people,’ who are they? They’re like my aunt. She was ‘good people,’ born that way. Not a mean bone in her body. Helped everybody. Unlike some others in our family, and maybe yours, who might have started with ‘good people’ genes, just maybe not all over, but surely in spots if you look close enough.

Except one of my distant cousins who tainted the family name. He wasn’t ‘bad people,’ just bad to cuss, especially when the subject of his third ex-wife’s name came up. And he was prone to prevaricate with flair and hyperbole when reciting fishing exploits with his best friend, Jim Beam. He was ‘good people,’ just slid a little sideways.

In small towns you won’t hear much about ‘bad people,’ just degrees of ‘good people.’ And if you do, it will be whispered. But if you were a fly on the pound cake in somebody’s house after Sunday night’s prayer meeting, you might hear of who was really bad. But come Monday, they will have miraculously become ‘good people’ once again, bless their hearts.

At a certain age funerals tend to replace baby showers. You go, pay your respects to the deceased’s family and cast a last look at the departed. You find yourself saying, like others, “They did a good job, looks just like him.” And you keep the cliché going, “He was good people.”

Personally, I’m glad to have grown up in a small town where the middle line between good and bad is not even gray, but razor thin. Nobody gets away with much very long. Small towns are the sole arbiters of their own truths, values and traditions. You walk a straight line and often on egg shells.

But in the end it really won’t matter which side of the aisle we sat on, or which pew we occupied. For when the eulogies are said, the last tears fallen, and the first clod of red clay hits the lid, what could be a more appropriate closure of the procession than hearing folks say, “He was good people.”

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While not elaborate, it pretty much sums it all up without saying too much, or too little, but just enough.


Bud Hearn
September 21, 2018

The September Spirit of Christmas

It’s an afternoon in August when my editor’s note arrives. It’s terse: “Article deadline, September 10th. Theme, Spirit of Christmas. Don’t make me hound you for it.”

I read it again. Christmas already? Is the North Pole melting and has Santa contracted with Amazon for delivery this year? I shake my head in disbelief. Jumping the gun is an understatement

As for being ‘hounded,’ it’s certainly an apt description for the late-summer howling of Dog Days. So, I do what comes natural…procrastinate till the last minute, hoping some epiphany will miraculously emerge to conjure up an idea of the Spirit of Christmas in September.

Right now my spirit is resting comfortably on the back porch with a deadline looming, the fan whirring and sweat pouring. My mind is an empty vessel.

Christmas thoughts today offer less excitement than Florence, this year’s hurricane. Plus, the pumpkin patch still needs picking and the ghosts of Halloween are yet to howl. Not to mention the Georgia-Florida football classic. There’ll be a lot of spirits and howling on East Beach for sure.

I add ice to my iced tea and give serious thought of how to summons the Spirit of Christmas from its slumber. First thing is to wake up Burl Ives and Bing Crosby for their Holly Jolly and White Christmas carols. Nothing sells until these guys start singing.

Unfortunately, I find that these heralds of shopping-mall Christmases have been sent for a cosmetic touchup before being rolled out. So much for that idea. The Spirit sleeps on. What now?

Meanwhile, the deadline ticks. I fidget while the Spirit snoozes. Force of will cannot wake up a napping spirit any more than it can hurry or delay a deadline.

Christmas comes like the ticking of a grandfather clock. The suspense builds in the seconds, arrives at the chime. Then amid the mess of gift wrappings the seconds still tick on and the Spirit eases out.

Who can forget Christmases past? Each one had its own special essence, all of which seem to blend into a consensus of joy, remembered even in September. So I sort through a few photograph albums (yes, there was a time when Kodak actually printed photos) in hopes of reviving the Spirit from all the memories. It works.

Just what is it that produces the Spirit of Christmas anyway? Sufficiently spiked eggnog helps, but why is this date, this deadline and the buildup to it filled with so much energy? It clearly has its own purpose of remaining dormant until its appointed time. Like the old wine advertisement, “We sell no wine before its time.” Advents arrive on their own time, just like hurricanes.

The ice melts in my tea and I lose all sense of time while browsing through the photographs. Something is stirring in them. Could the Spirit actually be waking up?

Ah, here’s a picture of Sophie, our first Westie puppy, delivered at Christmas. She rips through the discarded gift wrappings like a tiny white tornado. The spirit of laughter overwhelms us. Even though she’s now buried in our front yard, her spirit remains.

Oh, look at this one. It’s me, lying under a collapsed, 14-foot Blue Spruce tree. Seems we underestimated the tree stand. It was ultimately lashed to the door handle. Happy spirits are found in laughter.

I’m soon captured by the spirits of these past Christmases and ignore heat, deadlines, Florence, Halloween and football. The Spirit of Christmas has simply been hiding all along, sleeping silently amid the pages of this photo album, and I didn’t know it.

Even today the Christmas deadline is slowly ticking away. It’ll arrive soon enough, right on time and the waiting will be over. It will bring its own spirit of the season and with it screams of joy and surprise will come from new voices as they blend with the old.

The buildup of the season of joy will bring Burl, Bing and Elvis along with it. While the deadline will come and go, the memories will always remain, endued with their own special meanings.

The Spirit of Christmas is just not that hard to find. Even in September.


Bud Hearn
All Rights Reserved
September 13, 2018