Ponderings by Dan Ponder

I walked into the Renew Sunday School Class five weeks after Mary Lou and I last attended.  The class spontaneously broke into applause as I hobbled in with my cane.  It turns out they had all signed a get-well card before I arrived that they planned to mail to me this week.  It was good…

I would like to say that it started the weekend Auburn played Georgia.  You need someone to blame.  We had many Georgia friends and family join us at our tailgate.  I climbed a ladder to plant fresh flowers in our window box.  That is when my pain started. It was painful enough to lose a…

Cowboys and Indians.  It was the game of choice for boys my age sixty years ago.  It was fueled by popular television series of the times, like Gunsmoke, Rawhide, Bonanza, and Wagon Train.     The cowboys used the BB guns.  Someone got a new one every Christmas, it seemed.  The Indians had to use…

It is three weeks past the official start of Autumn.  September 23rd to be exact.  In this part of the world, that does not really mean that much.  Temperatures can still be high.  Harvest is still in full gear.  It is one of those seasonal changes that happens on the calendar and not anywhere else.…

It has been a day of big decisions.  What do I want to eat for breakfast?  For lunch?  For dinner?  What color t-shirt do I wear today?  Do I take a nap on the couch, in a hammock or both?  Is the cocktail cruise around the lake going to be clockwise or counterclockwise?   Mary…

It is hard to write about anything else when you have spent the entire week getting geared up for a football game.   The Auburn vs. Georgia rivalry is part of the DNA of my family.  My grandmother lived 30 miles from Athens in Monroe, Georgia.  My brother played for the Dawgs in the latter…

My father handed me the check written on the Bank of Cottonwood.  It was made out to me in the amount of $750 and I deposited it in my newly opened account at Auburn Bank.  I chose that bank because it had the first ATM I had ever seen in my life.  I made many…

I sat down on the bus after the Auburn – California game at Berkely.  It was near midnight and my team had just pulled out a rather ugly win.  A lifelong friend leaned over from across the aisle and said, “I just want to hear you rant and rave”. I looked at him blankly and…

There are certain incidents in time that everyone remembers exactly where they were when the event happened.  For someone my age, they might recall where they were when they heard that President Kennedy had been assassinated.  I was on the playground at Cottonwood Elementary School when we were called back into our classrooms. I laid…

The front yard was for baseball.  Strategically planted dogwood trees served as the bases and the grass along the basepaths was worn to dirt by the end of the Summer.   My brother and I played “Wiffle Ball” for hours on end, using the rosters of the teams we represented on any particular day. The…