Years ago, Barbara Mandrell had a hit country song “I was country when country wasn’t cool” that resonated with a man everybody called Uncle Shug in Garfield. He went a step further than Miss Mandrell’s way of putting peanuts in her coke; he put them in his moonshine whiskey. Uncle Shug also loved possum pie with Jack rabbit stew. He said if God made anything any better, he kept it for himself. He didn’t have any formal education and never went to school in his life. He bragged that he graduated from the school of hard knots with a major in common sense. He said that too many people listen to some educated fool instead of trusting their own common sense, which God gave to all of us. He didn’t believe that Neil Armstrong had walked on the moon, and Uncle Shug was certain the whole experience was a hoax and was completely stagged to look believable to the average “Joe”. “If gravity, or whatever you call it, won’t hold a feather down or a sip of water, what chance does a man have from drifting off into space? The chances are slim that a man will ever walk on the moon.” Nothing would ever change his mind about this miraculous feat of 1969, but Uncle Shug did believe you could find God in the cotton patch or the cornfield. God was everywhere, and within all of us, from the rare beauty of a butterfly to the flight of a hummingbird and God’s creation deserves our undivided attention, not only in temples or churches but also in our hearts. Uncle Shug never tried to be anyone but himself. He accepted his shortfalls and remained country to the very end.
