One of the places Pap lived when he was a boy
“Gone Like A Candle In The Wind” written by Leroy Drumm and Pete Goble
There’s two country graves on a hillside
And a farmhouse that’s wasting away
Fields that I know a man once tended with love
Grow nothing but tall weeds today
The old barn is sagging and falling
Roses grow wild ore the land
The old place don’t look like it did when
It was the pride of my momma and her man
Where is the boy with the slingshot
Who guarded the homestead back then
And where is the life that I used to call mine
It’s gone like a candle in the wind
I’ve seen daddy work in the cornfield
Till sweat soaked the shirt on his back
Making a living the best way he could
With hands that were callused and cracked
Time has made so many changes
In these forty years, I’ve been gone
Well I told mom and dad that some day I’d be back
But, I guess I’ve waited too long
Where is the boy with the slingshot
Who guarded the homestead back then
And where is the life that I used to call mine
It’s gone like a candle in the wind
Now mom and dad are just a memory
And here I am standing alone
Sadly remembering the line someone wrote
That said you can never go home
Where is the boy with the slingshot
Who guarded the homestead back then
And where is the life that I used to call mine
It’s gone like a candle in the wind
The old song about the boy and the slingshot came to my mind yesterday as I was on Granny’s back porch.
It’s a bittersweet song with lyrics that offer sadness tinged with the joy of having a childhood so lovely that you yearn for it.
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What a treat to hear this lovely song for the first time! How precious to have this recorded and being able to share and hear anytime you wish. I love their harmony and the lyrics. Thank you, Tipper. May God bless Granny, the new baby to be and the whole family!!!
Love the picture . That told my dad’s life. My dad worked so hard plowing the fields till his shirt was wet with sweat. Many a time had I saw this.
I remember boys with slingshots made with bicycle innertube rubber and fork tree branches. I havenot thought about that for years
We can’t physically ever go back to the past, but our memories can surely be triggered in an instant. One of my biggest triggers is scent. The scent of falling and drying leaves conjures up memories of me and my siblings and our friends all going trick or treating together through our small town. Back then, it was a safe, fun, delightful evening—filled with laughter and eating candy. . Another scent that gets me every time is the smell of a new babydoll. I am sent back in time to a Christmas of my dreams I got up and the living room was lit only by the glowing lights on the Christmas tree. Under the tree was a little table and two chairs—each one holding a new doll—one for my sister and one for me. It is the sweetest memory. I worked at our school for 28 years and in all that time the scent of the gym remained the same—sending me back to my junior high and high school years playing basketball every time I walked in. I did have a childhood full of memories that will stay with me forever.
I felt such a twinge on my heart strings when I read your pist. I am sad to hear that you sound so defeated. I can only imagine what it might be like to loose your spouse after being together for the biggest part of your life.
What do you do with your time now? Is there any interests or hobbies you used to enjoy or are able to participate in now? I live in Rose Hill, NC. I would live to be a pen pal…boy doesn’t that sound like a quote from our past. As children I used to have girls I was “pen pals” with all over the world!
Our old home place is falling in, God bless Granny
I wrote about my Granddaddy a few days ago, him being an orphan at 3 years old and a family in the community taking him in and raising him. This would have been 1891. Even though the road Tom this home place was on had been closed and abandoned and any buildings long gone, he would ask Daddy to walk with him back to this place. It would be about a mile. Of course I tagged along. Even though it was out of my way or no matter how busy I might be, I would always take my Daddy back to the Saylors Cross Road community of Anderson County, SC if I was going to Anderson. He enjoyed showing and telling me about things he had done at different places when growing up in the community. Now I wouldn’t take anything for those memories of doing this with him.
Nostalgic…I know the feeling..but if God wanted me to live in the past he would not have given me today.
The past isn’t dead and gone, it’s just temporarily unavailable. It’s still as real as the is present don’t you think?
Beautiful song! I remember when I was young, daddy would take a Sunday afternoon and drive us around to some of the old homeplaces he lived and where mama lived also. A wind could just about blow them over. I could see the spark in his eyes telling all the wonderful stories about each place and mama was the same about her homeplaces. Neither one stayed in the same house for long at the time, but each home held special memories. When we married, my father-in-law loved for us to take him back to his homeplace. He wasn’t much of a talker but if you wanted to start a conversation with him, just ask him about where he grew up and the stories flowed. My homeplace burned down but I still have wonderful memories of it. I also agree with Jim. My brother made slingshots but I can’t remember the last time I saw one made. At least we have our wonderful memories of simpler times.
How sad to think that childhood memories, places and faces, can be gone in the blink of an eye. Though the family home still stands and is used by others, my sister and I are the only remaining people–both of us now elderly. Thankfully, we both remember everything.
Tipper, Thanks for sharing Pap’s beautiful song. It reminds me of one of my favorite singer of ballads like that, Slim Whitman, who also had a beautiful voice for songs like that.
“Two lonely graves in a hillside” reminds me of my childhood home. Over to the right on the hillside were two upright stones facing east and depressions in the ground in front of them . Daddy thought they were graves but he wasn’t sure. He told us to leave them alone. Harold and Crazy Joe didn’t heed his admonition. I went along as a non-participant.
They dug until they hit something that suddenly startled them. They laid down their tools and hastily quit the scene, vowing never to return. I was tasked with returning the site to normal. I shoveled dirt back in the hole they dug without ever looking down into it. I mounded the dirt as would have been the practice many years ago. I reset the stone and raked leaves over the site as best I could, gathered their tools and left.
The poem is definitely making me yearn for childhood. I miss my parents so much <3
I can’t get enough of Pap and Paul’s singing even if it is a sad song. The lyrics are so true for most of us who moved away from home years ago.
In the late 50s I took my parents back to see their childhood homes and my own birthplace. It was truly a “sentimental journey” for the three of us. (For younger readers, that is an old song title.)
Not only are those halcyon days of childhood gone for me, I greatly fear that boys making their own slingshots are also gone like a candle in the wind. When is the last time anyone who reads this blog saw a boy with a homemade slingshot or saw a grandfather and his grandson checking dogwood trees or maybe a persimmon tree for a forked limb that looked just right for making one?
I don’t know when this song was written but the most famous use of the suggestion that you can’t go back or go home again was by an Appalachian boy (Asheville, NC) Thomas Wolfe in his 1940 novel titled “You Can’t Go Home Again.”
This song reminds me of your post “Tall Weeds and Rust”. For most of us, I think, there is a watershed divide in our lives when we cross over the ridge but pause to look back across our journey and beyond, into that of our ancestors. It isn’t a date or an age so much as a state of mind or – probably more accurately – a state of heart. And it is then that we begin to ask ourselves, “Will I, or can I, go back?”
What a beautiful song. It made me long for my childhood days. The words just says it all.
I have tried 3 times this morning to convince the post I am a human, maybe it knows more than I do. The first time was at 4:15, I had already been awake for over an hour thinking about the past. It seems like it was only yesterday when I finished high school now it like the words in a song my Granddaddy would sing each morning- life’s evening sun is sinking low a few more days and I must go. October 20th through the 26 are bittersweet for me, the 20th and 23rd are my son and grandson’s birthdays, the 26 would be my 49th wedding anniversary. We also went to together for 2 1/2 years before marrying. She was 19 and I was 20. The words and thoughts of today’s song are so much like mine, I long to turn back the hands of time and go back to when times were so much better for me.
I’ve been watching all your videos and reading your blog. I haven’t seen an update on your mom. How is she doing with the treatments? Praying for her.
Mary-thank you. She is doing well with the treatments so far 🙂
And don’t we all yearn from time to time to return to those childhood days with folks who are long gone?
Good morning Mrs. Tipper and family.
I sure am gonna learn this song, play it wherever I play, if that’ll be okay.
Paul will continue to be my inspiration while Pap teaches me harmony!
God loves you, and so do I.
Betty Davis
Can you just imagine the tales those walls could tell. Such a sweet picture to pass on to the next generation and on and on. The pleasure I get from seeing those two sing has got to be multiplied so many times for those who will see it for the next generations. God Bless and please give my hugs to Granny.