It started just like the real life TV shows, in which a child disappears and frantic family members look everywhere for him. Weeping relatives beg for his return and deputies hitch up belts heavy with walkie-talkies.

This column may be troubling, but I promised you I’d warn you.

Be warned.

Never let it be said that Joel Cowan needed two little old women to defend him.

No, typically, the Godfather (not “father”) can defend himself from “misstatements” like those in a column by former Peachtree City Mayor Steve Brown in The Citizen, May 13.

(This column initially ran on 12-5-79 in This Week in Peachtree City)

Someone asked me recently about the Banks family that settled on Greer’s Mountain long before Peachtree City was anybody’s pipe dream. I realized again how many people have moved here in the decades since most of us staked our own claim to this beautiful spot of the Earth.

This brief travelogue traces one of our earliest trips to Europe. Didn’t want you to think we’re footloose again, although I’m hoping we’ll get there this year. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen our daughter Mary, an opera company pianist, beginning in Stuttgart, Germany in 1984 and working for several other houses in the years since. She’s alighting later this summer for a new job in Duesseldorf.

The stars fell into alignment last week and I was able to come along to the lake with Dave for the first time since last spring. Can’t believe it has been so long.

The babies were coming, and as the arrival of our daughter and grandsons drew nearer, I was fidgety about having everything just so.

Stumbled over an article on one of my favorite subjects last week, the more amazing because of the case in point in our family.

Mary called last evening. She calls often enough that, if I’m busy, I sometimes hand her off to Dave while I continue what I’m doing.

As recently as a week ago, an acquaintance came up to me, looking as though she was about to divulge a state secret.

Birdwatchers respond graciously to stories like the one I wrote two weeks about our Carolina wrens. The short of it: A pair of wrens made a practice nest in the center of a one-time-Christmas wreath still next to our front door.

A familiar voice spoke into my ear from the pew behind us, as the congregation was settling down to worship.

“Can you believe it’s been 20 years?” Paul Yellina said, and I knew exactly what he was talking about.

There’s a reason we still have our Christmas wreath on the wall beside the door – nearly in April.

Girl Scouts delivering cookies have said nothing. Friends arriving for dinner, or the carpet cleaning fellow – they’ve either not noticed or figured they didn’t really want to know why there’s a Christmas wreath hanging there, right at eyelevel. It has been there since late in Advent. And there is a reason it’s still there.

Back to civilian life…

After 14 months, the 25 nurses of the 803rd were rotated back to the States and Lt. Baer’s next assignment was a war bond drive in the form of an air show throughout the western states.

Feeling somewhat uneasy about their carefree lives in war time, the flight attendants listened to a legendary military man:

NOTE: This was the first part of a Fayette Woman Magazine cover story that appeared in September 2003. Miss Essie died Feb.12, 2009, at 90.

Wouldn’t you think that between the big announcement – “You’re going to be a grandpa!” – and the actual event, someone would have clued in the most critical information a grandpa needs to know.

In some cases, wool-gathering at the wheel may be as dangerous as driving under the influence. Dangerous in more ways than one. Having neither dictionary nor tape recorder in the car, I sometimes have to pound thoughts in through my forehead, saying, “Remember this, remember!”

Dear Mary,
It’s been awhile since I’ve written you a real letter, but this will have to count. I just want you to know how much this election has meant to Daddy and me.

There’s a little game I invented to make history more palatable, first for myself, then for my own children. I was never an aficionada of dates and battles, although I’ve improved a lot since I was young, and at least one of my daughters became interested in political fiction as well as fact.

How cold is it?

Friends from Fargo, N.D., think our bone-shivering Georgia cold is like a balmy afternoon back home. We, however, are huddled by space heaters, trying to thaw out. We’ve become wearers of thermal undies, experienced in layering clothes to capture body heat.

In deference to their privacy, we’ll let our subjects remain anonymous today. Frank and Cora, we’ll call them, an older couple we’ve known for many years. A week or so after Thanksgiving, Cora announced to Frank that she’d been hearing what sounded like the scurrying of some rodent bowling in the attic above their bedroom at night.

It was that quiet time when the light begins to dim, and the sunset splashes one more banner across the western sky. With a few ounces of wine and twilight to loosen the memories, Dave started talking about his childhood, and Christmas time. He speaks of being a boy in St. Petersburg, Florida, and of parents struggling to hold a family together during the war years.

Here’s a quiz my daughter Jean passed on to me years ago. I wish I could credit someone for it, but I’ve never known where it came from. It’s at least 20 years old which means that those of us who have lived through the last two decades should come up with lots of 21st century puzzles.

The run-up to Christmas can be daunting. You and I are celebrating Christmas Eve when you read this. In “real” time, I’m writing last Thursday night in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Gastonia, NC.

My parents were grown folks when the Great Depression hit the United States in 1929. In fact, it was during that awful decade that they met, married, and had two children.

If you’ve spent much time with little boys, you probably know they are not quiet, dignified people. Self-discipline is still under development – I mean the boys’. I’m assuming we have already developed ours.

When we moved South in 1971 and started the search for the essentials: doctor, church, library, and dentist, we did not imagine that we’d have to go so far afield to find these professions represented.

For most folks, including us, Thanksgiving is a favorite. Nothing is expected of us if we’re invited to be with family or friends, except to gorge on a feast of traditional food and lend a hand with the clean-up.

It seems to me that the ungrateful spirit is the meanest, and the person who does not acknowledge a gift the sorriest. Life itself is a gift, perhaps the greatest of all.