Chicken Soup for the Country Soul

by Jack Canfield

  As fate would have it, thirty years later I was the feature producer for the television program Opry Backstage on TNN. I can’t begin to tell you how proud that made Momma. She had been suffering from an extended illness and died soon after I got the position. However, she died knowing I was working with the stars of her beloved Grand Ole Opry.

  Shortly after her death my producer, Rusty Wilcoxen, asked me to participate in a live segment for the show. I was to be interviewed by the host of Opry Backstage— Porter Wagoner. During the commercial break as I was being miked and placed into position for the interview, I felt as if someone had taken my hand. No one was touching me, but the sensation was real.

  As I looked at the crew in front of me, my thoughts suddenly raced to Momma, and for an instant I was the five-year-old girl again. To my left, less than a foot away, sat Momma’s favorite entertainer about to talk to her only child in front of millions of viewers. A single tear trickled down my cheek. As the floor manager was counting us out of the break, I spoke to Momma. Not out loud, but from the heart.

  We did it, Momma. We finally got those front-row seats! The tear was replaced by a smile.

  Roxane Russell

  “She said name three stars and I put

  Garth Brooks, Clint Black and Alan Jackson.

  What’s wrong with that?”

  Reprinted by permission of Martha Campbell. ©1998 Martha Campbell.

  Dream Big

  A dream is a wish your heart makes.

  Walt Disney

  My husband, Greg, and I are the parents of two daughters, Kelly, age nineteen, and Carrie, age sixteen. Kelly was born with spina bifida and hydrocephalus, birth defects that occur when the spinal column does not fully close, resulting in an “open spine.” As the parent of a disabled child, one of the hardest things I have had to deal with is not being able to make all of Kelly’s dreams come true.

  One of Kelly’s dreams was centered around country music star John Berry. Our family was first introduced to John’s music through Kelly. We all watched John’s music video as he performed “You and Only You,” and we were inspired by the way he sang with his heart.

  A loyal fan of John’s, Kelly was very moved after learning about his 1994 personal challenge with brain surgery. Kelly also has a brain cyst and related strongly to John’s feelings.

  In 1996, our family attended six of John’s concerts. That August, John signed a poster for Kelly with the words, “Thank you for listening to my music. Dream Big.” Kelly took his message to heart!

  At past shows, we had watched as John came out into the audience and danced with fans. Prior to attending the September 27, 1996, concert in Penn Yan, New York, Kelly and I had one of our regular heart-to-heart talks. She told me about a dream of hers to dance with John at a concert and asked me if this might be possible. I thought for a while before I answered and then told her, “Probably not because it would be very hard for John to bend down to reach you in your wheelchair.” She said she understood, but that she “could still dream.”

  Our family had tickets to both of John’s concerts that night. Kelly, Carrie and I sat under a huge tent close to the front of the stage. Greg was seated toward the back. Near the end of the first show, Kelly held a gift of flowers in her hands. When John walked down into the audience, he came toward Kelly to accept her flowers. He then bent down and danced with her! I just sat and watched, tears running down my face. John then danced with our other daughter, Carrie. He danced with me next, and all I could say over and over was, “You will never know, but you just made my daughter’s dream come true.”

  My husband does not usually show his emotions, but that night he cried his eyes out. At the end of the second show, John looked at Kelly and said over the microphone that he had watched her singing the words to all of his songs. He then called Carrie to the stage and gave her his guitar pick along with the song list he had taped to the stage as gifts for Kelly. We met John after the show, when everyone else had left, and we could not thank him enough.

  I would like to share part of a letter I sent to John Berry in November 1996:

  Our entire family has to hear you sing live again. Your voice, lyrics and very presence make us forget the reality of our lives for a short while.The memories will remain with us forever and somehow buffer our family against the next crisis that will surely come our way. You are a magical life line. It is a two fold blessing for me to watch what happens to Kelly as she watches you sing and as I watch her singing every song out loud with you. For that brief moment in time, I know that all of her dreams came true and her prayers were answered. For a mother, there is no greater reward. My thanks to you, John.

  Rita Batts

  Inspired by Love

  Always know in your heart that you are far bigger than anything that can happen to you.

  Dan Zadra

  As early as I can remember, I craved being in the spotlight. When I was two, I would crowd my mom and dad and aunt, uncles and cousins into our living room at holidays and sing them songs. The desire grew stronger throughout my childhood and became my life’s ambition.

  I was blessed to have two of the most loving and supportive parents a child could have. It was this warm, adoring encouragement that helped so much when an electric floor fan fell over on me and I lost the little finger on my left hand. I was thirteen months old, and I don’t even remember it happening. I think it was as traumatic for my parents as it was for me, but they handled it beautifully. Even though they knew losing my finger was going to be a challenge, they also knew my love of music would conquer any obstacles that I encountered.

  When I turned four, they decided to start me on piano lessons. Once a week, I packed my piano books under my arm and cheerfully walked up the street and around the corner in our Florida Gulf Coast town to the home of Irene Market, my piano teacher. Mrs. Market was elderly, small and frail—a wisp of a woman. But oh! That wisp could fill your heart with inspiration and make your fingers dance. She loved music, and she loved children. She made me love piano.

  There was only one problem. When I started lessons playing “Hot Cross Buns,” I did fine practicing on one of those little pianos like Schroeder plays in “Peanuts,” but after a couple of years, when it became clear that I had a talent for piano and wanted to continue—it also became obvious that I’d outgrown my “baby grand.”

  That made for a new problem. My mom and dad were both public school teachers. Dad was a painter who taught high school art, and Mom taught home economics; and they both loved their work. However, their salaries just didn’t provide enough money to buy a real piano.

  Then one day I got the surprise of my young life. Mom and Dad called me out into the garage. There, big as life, was a brown upright piano. Squealing with delight, I pulled the bench over and began playing. All those keys! They went on and on for octaves, and all but the highest key and the lowest key worked.

  When I asked where it came from, Mom grinned and said she’d found it at a garage sale—for twenty-five dollars.

  “It doesn’t look like much now,” she said. “But I’ll take care of that.”

  I can still picture how scratched and battered the wood of that old piano was. But true to her word and her creativity, within days, Mom had covered that piano with contact paper. It had orange and green mushrooms on it. For a kid in the late sixties, that was the height of cool.

  The arrival of that piano began a new era in my life. It lived in the garage, which was where my dad had his “art studio” set. To this day, I remember the glorious sounds and smells of creativity—oil paint, plaster, canvas and even the oil leaking from under the car. From then on I lived in the garage. It became my own personal stage. I sang and danced on the grandest stages in front of huge audiences, and I didn’t even have to close my eyes. I lived in a continuous musical, like a daydream, performing alongside such stars as Judy Garland, who inspired me so much as the child star of the Wizard of Oz.

  From my old piano, I learned that music def
ined much of who I was and what I loved. Practicing for hours every day was a joy. And the old piano gave its all. Being in the garage, the instrument was subjected to Gulf Coast weather year-round—through the humidity of summer and the cold of winter. (Yes, there are some cold winters in Florida!) Sometimes during the winter, I’d take a bowl of steaming water out with me, and when my fingers got too cold to continue, I’d warm them in the water and play on. Of course, our house became a regular stop on the piano tuner’s rounds.

  Not everyone was supportive, and the magic didn’t always occur. In college, I prepared to sing an aria from the opera Tales of Hoffman. When my name was called, I said a quick prayer and walked onstage to face the audience— and the panel of judges. My voice was in fine form for the occasion, and I felt really good as I gestured with my hands to accent the lyrics. Afterward, as the audience warmly applauded my performance, I felt a wonderful glow of satisfaction. From the smile on the faces of the judges, I was confident they had enjoyed the piece as well.

  Out in the hallway, I ran into the vocal professor. She stopped me and said, “I saw your performance, and I have to say . . .” She hesitated. “I was really distracted by your missing finger. You need to rework your movements so that your hand isn’t so visible. It’s really disturbing.”

  This is where I have to give my parents so much credit. Because of their nurturing and constant encouragement, I’ve never felt like I had a handicap at all. I believe that God gave me a voice and musical talent to share with others, to make them feel good, and I believe he gave me the challenge of my childhood mishap to encourage others, to let them know that they have more strength than they sometimes realize. He’s also given me this wonderful career in country music—a lifelong dream come true. Looking back, I can never recall the insensitive music professor’s words without remembering the old piano. I’m sure by the time the piano reached the garage sale, its owners saw a battered hunk of worthless junk. Maybe they could get twenty-five dollars for it. I admit that green and orange mushrooms might not add a lot to the value the se days. But if you were willing to look past the outer imperfections, inside that piano was a magical world of beautiful music—and the promise of possibilities for a young girl.

  Lari White

  As told by Ron Camacho

  A Cowboy’s Last Chance

  Joe Wimberly sat on a tree stump and stared at his house. It sits on a skinny road that meanders out of Cool, Texas, population 238, a flat, dusty place without so much as a drugstore or a gas station.

  “It ain’t exactly the Ponderosa,” Joe once told his wife, Paula, as he swept his arm toward the three acres or so of scrub grass that went with the little house. “But it’s our ranch.”

  Joe wore a cowboy hat and sported a bushy black mustache that matched his eyes, as dark as Texas oil. He was missing a tooth, right on the fifty-yard line. But his jaw was square and strong. And he stood taller than his five-foot-five-inch frame.

  Earlier that day, Joe received a call from the banker, who wanted money. The charge cards were full, the payments were late, the checking account was overdrawn. Joe didn’t have a nickel to his name, except for the house. And he swore he would never let that go.

  Being a cowboy was all Joe Wimberly knew. He had learned to ride a horse by the time he was four. At seven, he was herding cattle with his father. At thirteen, he was climbing onto the back of a steer.

  When Joe turned eighteen, he set out for a world where the Old West still lives, the last untamed range for the true American cowboy—the rodeo. Soon, anybody who knew rodeo came to know the name of Joe Wimberly. There were days when he walked around with one thousand dollars in his pocket. Other times he could not afford to eat. But there was never a day when he wanted to trade his chaps for a job with a boss looking over his shoulder.

  It scared Paula to watch Joe on a bull. Still, she knew being a cowboy put the sparkle in his eyes, and she never wanted to see that fade. So whenever he headed out the door, she kissed him good-bye, crossed her fingers and said a prayer.

  Joe was gone to the rodeo about two hundred days a year. He was one thousand miles away on the night Paula gave birth to a daughter, Casey. They had no insurance. “How we gonna pay for things, Joe?” Paula’s voice cracked across the telephone wires.

  “I’m gonna win,” Joe told her. “And I’m gonna keep winning.”

  He was as good as his word. With the grace of a gymnast and the nerve of a bank robber, Joe dazzled crowds at little county fairs and big city stadiums throughout the West. In the 1980s he qualified five times to compete in the National Finals Rodeo. In his best year, Joe won more than eighty thousand in prize money.

  However, with travel expenses and entry fees ranging from twenty-five dollars to more than three hundred dollars, times were never easy, especially after the birth of another daughter, Sami. But bills got paid, and when Paula took a job in a pharmacy, they saved enough for a down payment on their house.

  Joe could already envision a place for a horse corral on what was now the Wimberly Ranch. He poured a cement slab near the back door, then took a tree twig and carved the names of the Wimberly clan in the cement. Shortly after, Paula gave birth to a son, McKennon.

  Even when he was hurt, Joe seldom missed a rodeo. Once, his wrist got caught in the rope, and he dangled on the side of the bull as it kicked him and knocked him unconscious. He was taken away on a stretcher, blood running down his face.

  He came back from that injury and many others. But by now weeks had passed since he’d brought home a paycheck. Maybe I’m just no t trying hard enough, Joe thought. The bills were all way past due.

  Mesquite, on the outskirts of Dallas, is the site of one of the best-known rodeos in America. One day a Dodge Truck executive called rodeo owner Neal Gay with a promotion idea. If Gay would pick the meanest, wildest bull he could find, Dodge would put up a five-thousand-dollar prize for any cowboy who could ride it for eight seconds. The pot would grow by five hundred dollars every time the bull shucked a rider. The bull would be named after a new truck, Dodge Dakota.

  Gay liked the idea. He contacted Lester Meier, a rodeo producer who owned a nightmarish black bull that weighed 1,700 pounds and had a single horn crawling ominously down the side of its white face.

  “You got your Dodge Dakota,” Meier told Gay.

  Of the thirty bull riders who competed at Mesquite every weekend, only one, assigned randomly by a computer, got a crack at Dodge Dakota. Week after week, the beast sent cowboys hurtling, even a former world champion. But Joe Wimberly was never chosen.

  Joe was carrying a fifty-pound feed sack toward the horse pen at his ranch when he heard the screen door slam. Paula hurried over. “The rodeo called, Joe,” she said. “You drew Dodge Dakota for Friday night.”

  Joe dropped the feed sack. “You’re kiddin’ me.”

  “No, Joe, I ain’t kiddin’.” The pot had grown to $9,500.

  Joe started riding the bull in his mind. Stay loose, he told himself. This is just another bull. But Joe knew Dakota was a vicious outlaw.

  According to those who had studied Dakota, the bull started every ride the same way. It blew out of the chute, took one jump, kicked over its head, stepped backward and spun to the left, all in about two seconds. After that, it was anybody’s guess.

  That Friday, Joe paced behind the chutes. He looked up in the stands and saw his family. When the spotlight flashed on him, he pulled himself over the rails and settled on the broad, humped back of Dodge Dakota. He wrapped the rope around his right hand; the other end was twisted around the belly of the beast.

  Lord, I’m comin’ to you like a friend, Joe pleaded silently. You know how much I need this ride. Beads of sweat grew on his forehead.

  The gate swung open. Dakota bolted, and Joe’s thighs squeezed tight. The beast bucked hard, lifting Joe into the air, then slammed down. The bull bellowed and twisted to its left. Foam spewed from its snout. The cowboy thumped back on his seat, the rope burning his hand. He shot in the air, hi
s head snapping backward, hat flying off, but he hung on. The stands thundered—six thousand fans on their feet, screaming, shrieking, stomping. The clock flashed five seconds, six seconds . . .

  Dakota groaned in a voice from hell and bucked violently, four hoofs in the air. Suddenly the bull ran alone.

  Crashing flat on his back, Joe looked up to see the belly of the bull and its slamming hoofs. He scrambled away as the clowns chased Dakota back to its pen. Joe searched for Paula in the stands and slowly mouthed the words, “I am sorry.”

  Later that summer, Joe was again paired with Dodge Dakota. In an instant this time, the bull slammed him and his dreams to dirt.

  Now Joe was scrambling for money. He shod horses. He entered jackpot bull-riding contests, organized a rodeo school. But none of this put much of a dent in his debts. He was finally forced to place an ad in the house-for-sale section of the newspaper. “It’s only boards and paint and siding,” he told a tearful Paula. “If we stay together as a family, it doesn’t matter where we are.”

  Joe paid another humiliating visit to the banker. “Can’t I have just a little more time?” the cowboy pleaded.

  “You’ve had time, Joe,” the banker said flatly.

  One Friday in September, Joe was riding at Mesquite. With all his troubles at home, Joe hadn’t been thinking much about bulls. The purse for Dodge Dakota had grown to seventeen thousand dollars.

  They had stopped announcing ahead of time which cowboy would ride Dakota. Now they drew the name during intermission. Suddenly a rodeo official called out, “Hey, Joe Wimberly, you got Dakota.”

  Neal Gay came by. “Third time’s the charm,” the rodeo owner said with a wink.

  As Paula watched from the stands, her heart began to pound. Twice before, she had seen Joe’s hopes soar as high as the stars, and then sink to the depths.