Ponderings by Dan Ponder

The Super Bowl!  The Big Apple!   The most watched television show in history!   The hype goes on and on until the country and even the world are whipped up into a frenzy.    Can there really be any TV ad worth $4 million for 30 seconds of airtime?   Apparently many companies think so, as they…

The old house has spanned many generations of my family.  My great-grandmother, Mary Hunter Saville Roberts, was my last direct descendant to actually live there.  She died over one hundred years ago. I was a child the last time anyone actually lived there at all.  My father’s distant cousin, Charlie, and his wife Margaret had…

I am constantly amazed at the treasures that are within a day’s ride from our home here in Southwest Georgia.  Occasionally, you know about these opportunities and just have never gotten around to visiting.  Sometimes, you never heard of the place and just happen to stumble across a real gem. Such was the case of…

These words came from my longtime friend, India Jernigan, as she spoke at the funeral of her grandson, Matthew Jernigan, this past Saturday.  It was an amazing service honoring the life of an amazing young man. Most in Southwest Georgia have heard of the tragedy of the three friends duck hunting on Lake Seminole on…

Winning isn’t everything.   Whoever was the first to utter those words clearly wasn’t a football loving Southerner.   It is now four o’clock in the morning and I am somewhere over Arizona flying back after the BCS National Championship Game, where my beloved Auburn Tigers fell in the final seconds to the #1 FSU Seminoles. The…

One of the unexpected benefits of writing a weekly column is that you can look back and see what you were thinking at certain times of each year.  New Year’s Day is one of those times.   For better or worse, I can revisit my columns and see what resolutions I kept and which ones fell…

Today is Christmas Day.  It is special to me on so many levels.   Of course, the most obvious and important reason is that it marks the birthday of Jesus Christ over two thousand years ago.  No matter how commercialized Christmas has become, this amazing birth remains the reason we celebrate. It is also the only…

I am sure I don’t have to tell anyone reading this column how busy the Christmas season has become.  Decorations are put up in stores by Halloween and items are on sale by Thanksgiving. Holiday parties from every direction are added to the schedule.  You don’t want to decline anything, whether it’s from your office,…

You want to believe things will get better. We hit bumps in the road along the way in almost everything we do.  Life, work, relationships, and yes, even sports.   The bump the Auburn football team hit last year was pretty big, more like a mountain.  It devastated the team, their fans, and even caused the…

The year was 1963.  Jimmy Sidle was the quarterback for Auburn and the first quarterback in NCAA history to lead the nation in rushing yardage. He was a consensus All-American that year.   His sidekick was Tucker Frederickson, an All-American the next year and the first player picked in the NFL draft in 1965.   It…