Ponderings by Dan Ponder

I have been a lifelong reader, but it is only since I started listening to audiobooks while taking long walks that I realized the number of chapters different books have.   Some will have 70 chapters and some just a few.  There is not a right or wrong way to write a book, as they…

Actually, I never had a Grandaddy John.  However, my mother has a great friend named Bonnie, who had a stepfather named John.  The children of Bonnie and her siblings called him Granddaddy John.  This is his story, sort of. This past week, I took my mother down to Panama City Beach to one of her…

The 4th of July is a very important date to my family for a variety of reasons.  First and foremost, we celebrate the founding of our country which has given our family generations of opportunity and success.  We celebrate those ancestors in our family that fought to secure that freedom we all cherish and occasionally…

It was the most unexpected of gifts, a certificate to a backpacking outfitting store.  My wife, Mary Lou, had heard me talk for years about my dream of one day hiking the Appalachian Trail.  Each time we crossed the “AT” as it is known, I would recount the story to my own kids about how…

My wife, Mary Lou, and I were sitting out on the front porch with our neighbors a few days ago. ML and I had been quite busy, having put up 20 quarts of field peas, nine quarts of fresh butterbeans, a dozen ears of fresh sweet corn and 12 jars of new crop Mayhaw Jelly.…

My wife, Mary Lou, and I headed to Compass Lake this past weekend for a few days.  We were expecting hot weather, but we still had a few things to do before our extended family comes down for the July 4th weekend.  All our children, along with our grandchildren and my mother will be joining…

The rainbow was framed between two cypress trees as I walked out on the dock at Compass Lake.  It was a bit unexpected since it had not rained, but in the distance, I could see the rain cloud across the lake that was refracting the light.   Two days later, Mary Lou and I were…

Fred Ward, Freddy as I called him as a kid, was one of my next-door neighbors until I was in the first grade.  He was probably ten years older than me, close to the age of my Uncle Joe.  Fred posted on Facebook this week about his memories of Memorial Day during his youth. They…

It is never too late.  Just ask Phil Mickelson, who just a few weeks shy of his 51st birthday became the oldest golfer to win a major tournament in professional golf this past week.  I knew something was up when I walked in Sunday afternoon and my wife, Mary Lou, was glued to the final…

It is hard to believe, but this Friday, May 21st will be the twentieth anniversary of my Dad’s death.  “Big Dan” was a huge part of my life, and still is.  I have been thinking what I would say to him if I could write him a letter.  Sort of fill him in on what…