June is a month for stories! Some of my best memories come from traveling during the summer months and this one brings a smile to my face just thinking about it. Well, I should say it brings a smile to my face now. During the ordeal, it certainly did not!
Years ago, you may remember that the McKameys hosted their homecoming in Clinton, Tennessee. At the time, my whole family was still living in Missouri and promoter Duane Garren had bus trips to a few events like the McKameys Homecoming and NQC. One year, my sister and I decided to go on the bus tour with the Garren’s and a bunch of Gospel music lovers from the area and go to the McKameys Homecoming.
So my sister and I get on the bus trip and we are having a big time! Most of the folks on the trip were folks we had met at area concerts and considered friends. After a few hours rolling down the highway, we arrived at our first stop – lunch. The bus pulls into a Cracker Barrel in Paducah, Kentucky. Duane Garren had a reservation for the whole group, so all of us piled around those big long tables set up end to end. It was like the marriage supper! I was sitting with some friends and talking and my sister did the same a few spots down. Then I see my phone ring, and it’s my mom. I answer, and instead of a friendly, “Hello, how are you, having fun, honey?” all I heard was…
“Put your sister on the phone! Now!”
Now y’all, I was so alarmed by what my mom said I didn’t ask her what was wrong or why she needed to talk to my sister and not me. I simply handed the phone across the table to my sister and repeated the message, “Mom needs to talk to you! It sounds urgent!” No longer had I passed the phone to her, she got up and left the restaurant for a quieter place.
She was gone for sooooo long. I began to worry. It felt like an eternity before she came back and relayed what happened with a big smile. Apparently, my mom’s first words to her were, “How do you load the gun?” There was a four foot long rattlesnake in the driveway…and my mom was determined it wasn’t going to stay for long! (My mom discovered its presence after coming home from the grocery store.)
I’m not lying when I say my family lived in Missouri for 20 years and we never saw one rattlesnake on our property. (Well, I guess I can still say that, but not my poor mom!) It certainly wasn’t what we expected to hear from her on the first day of our trip. After talking about it later, my mom would go on and on how that was the largest snake she had ever seen. Some say that if a snake is really big, that means it’s really old. Well, I hope our unwelcome visitor had a nice long life, because he picked an inconvenient time to be in the driveway!
RIP Mr. Rattlesnake!
