I thought I’d wander back through diaries that I kept on and off for several years and see what I could find with today’s date, 6 December. I found a couple: one from 1977 and one from 1981. Both are back in my Trekkie days, which were, admittedly, not fanatically so. I liked the show but didn’t let it take over my life. I called my diary Captain’s Log and used a few different dating systems, both of which are translated with the transcriptions below. I’m going to try not to edit the writing, so that my mistakes in spelling and grammar stand.
Captain’s Log: 120.677 [December 6, 1977]
It’s 8:00 AM and snowing. It really looks good. I told Phil on Saturday that it was gonna snow today. I hope to pass all of my tests and go to ballgame tonight. At the ballgame I hope to see Madison beat Reynolds and Leesa. . . . Lord, be my guide this day
Captain’s Log: Supplimental
Today has ended rather boring, but well. I made 84 on my Math 110 test so I’m out of there with an 87.
It continued snowing and freezing the rest of the day so the games were called (I didn’t get to see Leesa). We all sat around tonight listening to music then watching “Houston, We’ve Got a Problem” . . . . God be praised!!!
Okay, so I was a first-semester freshman music major (flute) at Mars Hill College when I wrote this. I was living on campus in Spilman Hall. My roommate was Johnny Sawyer, with whom I’d grown up in Walnut. He was hardly ever there, so it was like having a private room. The Phil mentioned is Phil Shuford, who lived across the hall with his roommate Yogi Something. I don’t know where Yogi is, but Phil lives in Ozark, Missouri. We’re friends on Facebook. The math course I reference was an early computer course, in which we learned to create those punched cards that were the apps of 1977. And in those MHC days, Leesa was in my heart and mind but not with me. She’d begun her career at Creative Hair Design in Asheville and was working hard to build a clientele and support herself and Lane, who was seventeen months old at the time.
Captain’s Log Stardate 8112.06 [December 6, 1981]
As seems almost usual for me on Sunday morning, I woke up ill at the world. The Lord knows how hard it is for me to get up before 11 AM. I almost decided not to go to church, like every Sunday, thinking that I got nothing from the small, country service. Then I realised, as always, that they are my people and, even though I may get nothing from the service but seeing them and feeling their friendship, that is enough. Then I also come face-to-face with the fact that the singing I dread with such passion is for them and not for me, and that, being graciously given the gift from God, it is my duty to sing for them. It should also be my desire to do so. Well, Allen met me at the door asking if what he heard about me signing with Capitol was true and he was followed closely by Butch asking the same. I quickly gave them my practiced explanation about Townhouse but they were still pleased. When time for me to sing came around, as I was getting my guitar, Raymond spoke up about my struggles with my music and my witness for the church and my hopefully impending record deal. Then totally unexpectedly he suggested a standing ovation for me and I was overwhelmed. If it is not the Lord’s will for me that this all go through all right, He sure is planning to teach me a great lesson in disappointment. Even at that, though, this morning was a great blessing, and I am very thankful for all those people there.
As far as my music and my career go, I am constantly trying to ask with a sincere heart that the Father’s Will be done and not my own. I could live with losing this deal but not with going against His plans for me.
Oh, in church I sang “A SONG FOR CAROLINA” and “DEAR MOTHER”.
The rest of the day was the usual big chicken dinner and lazy Sunday afternoon. I did, however, add music to and edit some lyrics I wrote last night called “DO YOU EVER MISS ME”
We practiced for the Christmas program this evening then I returned home to watch “YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN” on the tube.
As always it is quite late as I write this so I’ll sign off for now…MC…”Dear Mother, I know He’ll come again”
I’d left Mars Hill College two years before, December 1979, in the middle of my junior year, and transferred to Belmont College in Nashville for the spring semester of 1980, to study music business. But it was too much business and not enough music, so I stayed only one semester before transferring to UNC-Asheville–as an English major–for half the fall semester of that year before quitting altogether. I lived at home in Walnut, writing songs and playing solo at different events and venues around the area. I had a manager named Ron Weathers, who worked out of Asheville, and we’d spent some time in Nashville, where Earl Richards recorded my songs for his publishing and production companies. Earl had cut a deal with Townhouse Records, which was distributed by Capitol Records, and my first album was in the works.
The Townhouse/Capitol thing eventually fell through. Although I probably still have the lyric somewhere, I don’t remember anything about “Do You Ever Miss Me”; most likely it was a Leesa lyric. I remember singing “A Song for Carolina” at a couple of big events, one of which was the ceremony in Raleigh, North Carolina, celebrating Liston B. Ramsey’s ascension to Speaker of the state’s House of Representatives, but again, I remember little about it. “Dear Mother” I still perform now and then.