The world needs some family values
Far out in Colbert County in an area near Cherokee called Freedom Hills, my parents, Dewey and Lillie Mae Denton, scratched out a life from a small creek bottom farm. There was no electricity or running water in our little house. We were poor but we didn’t know it, but we never had a thought about being underprivileged in any way.
We had everything we needed and loved what we had. It was always early to bed and early to rise and work hard every day. Never having the finer things in life, we managed to live well with lots of good food to eat from a garden of vegetables, two or three pigs, lots of chickens for meat, and a cow for milk and butter. Mama always made sure we had clean clothes to wear that she washed in a hot washpot and scrubbed on a washboard.
My parents were good hard-working people, and I never had a thought of being abused or mistreated in any way. I was sure that they loved me with all their hearts, but they never told me. That’s just the way it was back in those days. Folks didn’t tell their kids that they loved them. They always gave us their time when work allowed them to, and they both made sure we kept our family values.
As a small boy sitting on the front porch swing at our old house, I learned to love Freedom Hills. I could hear the whippoorwills when the stars came out at night. Looking up through the moonlight into the universe, it was always amazing and fun for me to find the Big Dipper in the darkness above and watch a falling star race across the sky.
Now after more than 80 years, the little house is no longer there but the nearby spring that I carried water from is still running clear and cool. Now, it saddens me to think that all that’s left of Mama and Daddy is a stone a few miles down the road at Mt. Zion Cemetery and the good memories of my years spent with them.
Some people say the world has progressed over the years and it has, but when we watch the evening news, we can quickly see the world could use some family values.
When we sincerely reflect on how much the values of mankind have changed over the years, I believe paraphrasing the song “Imagine” written years ago by John Lennon tells us the perfect story regarding the things that really matter in the world we live in today.
The average person cannot imagine having no possessions or experiencing hunger. What a wonderful world this would be if people only appreciated the good things that most of us have here in this great country of America.
God’s love for us is everlasting and is almost beyond our human understanding. He only asks that we do our best to live without sin and love him and each other.
Being blessed with a long life here on Earth is a wonderful thing, but we must be keenly aware that our time is very limited. We should make the days that remain count and do all we can do to be of service to God and others.
Bobby Denton is a former Democratic member of the Alabama Senate, who represented the First District from 1978 to 2010, serving eight consecutive terms spanning 32 years. In 2002 he was given the honorary title Dean of the Senate as its most senior member.
