Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar...

Last Wednesday, Mrs. RWP and I hopped into our 11-year-old car that we have driven for more than 260,000 miles and added another 1,000 miles to the odometer to visit relatives in eastern North Carolina (500 miles there and 500 back). We spent one night in Raleigh (pronounced Rahly by the locals even though I grew up saying Rawly; perhaps our English readers can enlighten us as the place was named after Sir Walter Raleigh) visiting with cousin Amy. Next day we popped in on cousin Nancy and her husband Ronald in Smithfield for a short visit. Finally we arrived at our ultimate destination, the town of Clinton, where Mrs. RWP’s brother and his wife live, to help them celebrate his 80th birthday.

An interesting fact about Clinton, North Carolina, is that it is within spitting distance of Spivey’s Corner, where the National Hollerin’ Contest has been held on the third Saturday in June each year since 1969. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), we could not attend the 2011 version as we had to leave Saturday morning for the day-long trip back to Canton so that I could play chimes/piano/pipe organ (our Yamaha Clavinova is very versatile) at our church on Sunday. I was mildly disappointed and thought of Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken.” Mrs. RWP, on the other hand, was very happy.

You know I’m going to include a video clip.

Here it is.

As the 2003 winner said, “I want to thank the Lord because without Him none of us would be here.”

A final comment: The background in the photograph of the birthday cake is a tablecloth crocheted by the honoree’s mother at least sixty years ago. We have one just like it at our house.

Now that and the fact that our brother has reached 80 are things worth hollerin’ about.