“Pick a random Friday six months from now. Mark it on your calendar as ‘Everything Worked Out Celebration Dinner.’ Watch your mind start acting like it’s already on the way.” ~ Unknown
preservation
At last week’s reception, I got to see a couple of old schoolmates that I hadn’t seen in a very long time. Steve Sargent and I (top) graduated together, and since I missed our 40th reunion and he missed our 30th, it had been 23 years since we’d last seen each other to the best of my memory. We wasted no time catching up, and eventually stumbled into a conversation about historic preservation thanks to the photograph he’s standing beside called “James.” It was taken at the old Cannel City post office when I had the rare opportunity to stand behind the window with postmistress Charlotte Oldfield. James Lykins has since passed on, as has Charlotte, but everyone in Cannel City knew him and the post office. Steve’s father-in-law, cousin Roger Finch, runs Luther Reed’s store at Caney. It’s one of the last remaining relics of the mining community that used to be there, and Roger has turned it into a living museum. A few years after I shot the pic of James, the post office’s interior was replaced. Roger now has it in the store. Steve bought the photograph, and when the exhibit is over, it will hang in the museum alongside the old post office window. I will be honored to see the two side by side, and I’m so grateful that Roger and Steve are preserving the old store and using it for the good of the community.
music
As I talked to Steve, I noticed a man sitting alone in the corner. It was my old friend and bandmate Kim Ratliff. The last time I saw Kim it was the West Liberty Christmas parade. I’m pretty sure it was 2012, and he was running for Morgan County Sheriff. We didn’t have much time to talk then, but we had a little longer to catch up this time. When we were in High School, we played a lot of music together. He didn’t become sheriff, but he’s still playing music, saying he’d just completed some recordings with JP Pennington. In 1981, we cut a record together in a Lexington studio that, decades later, I learned belonged to friends Rick and Melanie Johnson and was engineered by Les “is more” Campbell, may he rest in peace. I recall that day very well. As usual, I had to cut all of my tracks in a single day, and I had even less time that day because I needed to get back to West Liberty for the Junior prom with Tim Gevedon. I had my dress, he was adorable, and I could not be late (yes, I made it back in time). The album was released in 1982. And the rest is history, or so I thought. Fast forward to 2017, and a Swedish record company, Subliminal Sounds, discovered that album – “Fear of the Night” by K.S. Ratliff and Black Magic – and pushed hard for a reissue. They asked Kim to write liner notes, and when it was released in 2018, I was bowled over by the incredibly kind things he said, calling me a child prodigy. For that era in that tiny mountain town and being completely self-taught, I suppose I was, although I would never consider myself such a thing. But compared to some of the near-toddlers I see playing on YouTube these days, I was a complete hack. What do they feed children these days? I digress. The record is hard for me to listen to because within five years of its making, with some lessons under my belt (at last), my playing reached a whole other level. The guys in the band were fine. It was me I couldn’t listen to, which made his kindness all the more touching. As we talked at the reception, he said, “You were always different.” I’m thinking, different how? I’m a weirdo? Alien? Out of my mind? What? “You could do anything you put your mind to,” he continued. I then realized he was looking at the photographs on the wall as he was talking to me. It was as if I was watching him write those liner notes. I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. I was humbled into speechlessness. I hope one day I see him again when I’ve collected myself so I can tell him how valuable he has been to me, and how thankful I am to have been a small part of his life. I have been blessed beyond measure throughout my life, and I am grateful for every second of it.
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