I don’t ever remember going to a high school football game when a short prayer for the safety of the players wasn’t done. I am amazed that some misfit decided that our area’s values don’t jive with theirs.

Isn’t there something called “community standards,” and if people don’t like it I know three guys with a truck, and they can move you. Madeline Murray O’Hare has been dead since 1995. Google her. I see this issue as waking up a long-silent majority.

I just bought some microwave popcorn from a lady who works in the office who is selling it for her son’s Boy Scout troop. Does anybody still pop corn on the stove anymore? Like many of you, I think the Boy Scouts is a terrific organization. The local troop that meets at the First United Methodist Church has a wonderful pancake breakfast every year.

About 1960, Violet Farmer was our den mother for our Cub Scout pack, and it was as a Cub Scout I got to go to my first circus in Atlanta with the Yaarab Temple’s Shrine Circus at the old Atlanta Municipal Auditorium on Edgewood Avenue. Eight years later, I saw Jimi Hendrix set fire to a guitar in that same venue. Another Cub Scout outing was visiting WWCC in Bremen. The station was in the heart of Bremen near a drug store and the sounds coming from the speakers made us scouts realize we were in a very special place.

Lee Williams was on the air, and I thought to myself, “This fellow is having fun and getting paid to do it.” Right then and there, my course was set. I started my first radio job at WPID in Piedmont, Ala., 41 years ago this weekend. It was a day I will never forget. As a disc jockey, I was pretty bad. I once introduced the 70s group Seals and Crofts as arts and crafts.

Radio was a fun thing to do for about 37 years. I worked in some nice places like Asheville, N.C., and Montgomery, Ala., where the listeners treated me like a first cousin. I remember how green I was that first year on the air. Seth Cain is a young broadcaster that many of us see going to the very top rung of radio broadcasting. He has really progressed in a relatively short period of time on WKNG and the other stations in that group out of Carrollton. Mitch Gray is a class act that does a great job as the voice of the University of West Georgia Wolves.

There was a time when radio stations in the Atlanta market had an identity. WSB was about news and information. WQXI and WZGC was rock and roll, now both stations are sports talk. WPLO and WBIE were the stations you dialed in for country music. WBIE has been WKHX for about 30 years, and WPLO is now Radio Disney.

Today, it is fruit basket turnover on the AM and FM frequencies. The station I worked at for 23 years went from country to oldies to now all news. Seems that format changes are constant in the big city. Tallapoosa is blessed to have a 50,000 watt blow torch that serves our community and area well playing music that has consistently stood the test of time and giving valuable local news and information. Collin Worthington is a peach of a newsman who does a great job. There was a time when we had “must see TV.”

It doesn’t exist anymore, because we have Tivo, Netflix, and all kinds of on-demand services to watch what we want to watch according to our time schedule. In seeing the promos for the new fall shows on the networks, I don’t see a big hit in the bunch. I have not watched much prime-time television since Seinfeld went off the air.

I watch a lot of Fox News, History Channel, A & E, Turner Classic Movies and ESPN. I watch Fox News because I once flipped over to MSNBC and had a desire to wear a Che Guevara or Chairman Mao T-shirt. I watch Fox, but I am not some right-wing nut job. I am not a member of a TEA party and have never been invited to any of my little girls tea parties they have with their dolls.

It seems everybody’s political ideology is pigeon holed. Do you remember when Georgia didn’t have a two party system and being a Republican was akin to being a pork chop at a bar mitzvah? My how things have changed. I just know that the election is about 50 or so days out, and it can’t get here soon enough. Regardless of who wins the November election, our republic will stand.

Aren’t the days and nights becoming quite nice as fall will be here a week from today. Don’t you just love it when the crisp air of an autumn morning greets us daily? Have you tweeted? My Twitter account is rhubarbjones69 in honor of the year I graduated dear old Tally High.

I am hoping the Vols have a good year because I admire Derek Dooley, and he takes on the slings and arrows from critics of his program and still stands tall. His father turned 80 a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t grow up a Dog fan, but I have always been one of Coach Vince Dooley. Seeing him down the hall from my office at Kennesaw State is an almost daily treat. Coach Dooley is helping KSU get their football program off the ground, and we hope to field a team in 2014.

Rhubarb Jones is a Tallapoosa native. He was recently recognized as a lifetime achievement award winner from the national office of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society in New York City. Comments may be sent to P. O. Box 6, Tallapoosa, GA 30176 or via e-mail at rhubarbjones@aol.com previous columns are at www.tallapoosa-journal.com.