As we remember those who declared on this day a Great Nation, I wanted to share with you some notable quotes from some odd and regular folks, saints, and bigots, of my crossroads village, Shuffletown. God bless them all. They abided in the years of yesterday and taught us how to shoulder today.

Shuffletown is a strange name, but once there were many places with odd sounding names. Just up the road there once were places called Frog Level, Three Pistols, Peach Hollow, Emmy Town, and Pig Squeal.
William A. Rozzelle Jr.

Mrs. Took was so old she had shriveled to the size of a hound dog sitting up. She wore lacy bonnets that covered her face and big white lace collars. She was nice and sweet. However, she did smell like old shoes.
Judy Rozzelle

A shotgun house is built with the back door lined up with the front door. If it was necessary, you could stand in the front door and shoot somebody running out of the back door.
Hank Wallen

The cow seemed not to mind. Oh, it might have aggravated the cow when Rob pried open the cow’s mouth and stuck his head inside. He just couldn’t figure out how the cow ate grass or why?
Mrs. Susan Griffin

We’d line up for our chigger medicine. The kerosene was supposed to keep chiggers off you.
Ivy Aaron Barnes

If there was something that needed doing whether it was plowing or planting the girls worked just like the boys. One day, Fred Walled, our neighbor, asked Daddy, “Don’t you wish these girls was boys?”
“Well, no Fred, I don’t,” answered Daddy. “I wish the boys were girls.”

Maria Hooper

I was going to be the first mailman to deliver mail in these parts, and I thought that the sight of a redheaded mailman riding a black bull would be something to see.
Mac Gillis

It is the school bus that teaches you the true meaning of the Darwin Theory, survival of the fittest. But like childbirth and blows to the head, the memory of the experience recedes with time.

Judy Rozzelle

The actual church camp wasn’t much. I do not remember what I learned of Jesus’ life back then, but I will never forget how the bathroom smelled.

Judy Rozzelle

Three decades later, a doctor convinced my cousin to have the cracked vertebrae in her neck repaired, that was back when if you fell out of a tree at church camp; they would brush you off and fuss at your for breaking the tree.
Judy Rozzelle

He said that before the day ended; Jim Bob could pump oil…crap…and carry on a conversation at the same time.
Slick Cameron

“Dad, are those reindeer?” my youngest piped up from the back seat. We just sat in the car in the driveway watching. There were goats and a sled on my rooftop. In the middle of the sledge’s seat was the blessed brick.

Jim Bob Cameron

Camerons piled out of the hay like clowns out of a clown car. It was not Christmas Eve at church until the Camerons arrived, brushed hay from their clothes and entered the church. Then and only then, did the Christmas Eve service begin in Shuffletown.
Judy Rozzelle

I was told by folks that the Abernethy women did ever marry ‘cause they couldn’t find a man who could fix a fence as good as they could.

Lee Wallace

I don’t right recall whether or not I bit his finger off.
Zeke Wallen

She drove me crazy. When I took her out and introduced her, I’d say, “This is Cousin Judy, she hasn’t got a lick of sense, but she’s got big boobs.”
Yvonne R. Herbert

The house just wasn’t big enough for both of us. There’s only so much a man can take. It wasn’t so bad living in the chicken house.
Bill Short

The fishing guide on the Shuffletown Grocery Calendar is two-thirds wrong.

Reese Cleghorn

The calendar says today is a good fishing day and that means it’s poor.

Tad Rozzelle

Cotton said that if we let one more animal in that house, we were moving to the city.
Teeny Henderson

I figure our kids consumer enough sacraments those Saturday to thoroughly cleanse their heathen little souls.
Mutt Rozzelle

When he arrived and saw the flames he jumped out of his car cursing like a sailor. “Aw Hell,” he said, “I thought you meant you had a woman in your backseat on fire.”
Barry Smith

Once upon a time, there was a place called Shuffletown. A semi-scenic tourist trap, nine miles outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. These are my people.