“Hush” by future Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band Deep Purple is playing on the iPod and thoughts came of the recent passing of the song’s composer Joe South. “Games People Play,” “I Knew You When,” “Down in the Boondocks” and “Don’t it Make You Want To Go Home” were all written by the musical prodigy from Cobb County who premiered on radio as a boy on WGST in Atlanta and was a 2003 inductee into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame.

If you listen to “Don’t it Make You Want To Go Home,” you’ll get mental images of where we live. “All God’s children get weary when they roam, don’t it make you want to go home,” is a song lyric many of us can identify with. He lost his wife, Jan, a few years ago, and many feel that he grieved himself to death.

A round of applause goes to the people in our town who have worked hard in this year’s series of monthly Saturday night “Possum Pickin’” concerts.

Can you believe that Thanksgiving is only five weeks away? Why is it that most of us only have cranberry sauce on that day? A fact to know and tell is that the poet who wrote “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” Sarah Josepha Buell Hale, was responsible for Thanksgiving being recognized as a national holiday. She was a poet, writer, and was fighting for equal rights for women long before Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan led the women’s liberation fight in the 60s.

Did you have a good time at last weekend’s city-wide yard sale? It was a beautiful day for it, for sure.

Dear readers, can you believe that we are about 24 days away from the election? My buddy, Dave, is a retired member of the USMC and e-mails me some gems from time to time, and I thought I’d share one he recently sent: Think about this, but it’s 100 percent true that at least 15 people in this world love you in some way. A smile from you can bring happiness to anyone, even if they don’t like you. Every night, someone thinks about you before they go to sleep. You mean the world to someone. If not for you, someone may not be living. You are special and unique. When you make the biggest mistake ever, something good can come of it. When you think the world has turned its back on you, take a look: you most likely turned your back on the world. Someone that you don’t even know exists loves you. If you have a great friend, take the time to let them know that they are great.

I got some information a few weeks ago that one of the greats of American music, Jerry Lee Lewis, is in very poor health and will probably never perform again. Meeting him in 1979 emceeing a concert with him, the Gatlins, Dottie West and Jerry Reed at a concert in Montgomery is a treasured memory. He called everybody “killer.” His contract called for him to always to be paid in cash. When he launched into “Great Balls of Fire,” I thought Garrett Coliseum would explode.

Fans can read about him in a book called “Unconquered: The Saga of Cousins Jerry Lee Lewis, Jimmy Swaggart, and Mickey Gilley.” It covers their hardscrabble lives in Ferriday, La., and how each of the talented cousins rose to be icons in American popular culture.

The Georgia Music Awards is tomorrow evening from the Cobb Energy Center. Gary Rossington, 38 Special, and Sugarland, are among those being inducted, along with the late “Skinny” Bobby Harper, who was a radio legend and also a good friend to many. Bobby had the only funeral I ever went to that had an open bar. Georgia Music Hall of Fame will be emceed by recent WSB retiree Monica Pearson and will be broadcast tomorrow at 5 p.m. over Georgia Public Broadcasting.

Falcons are undefeated after five games into the season. Hats off the National Football League for their awareness campaign for breast cancer.

Rhubarb Jones is a Tallapoosa native and a member of the Country Music Disc Jockey Hall of Fame in Nashville and the Georgia Radio Hall of Fame. Comments are welcome at P.O. Box 6, Tallapoosa, GA 30176 or via email at rhubarbjones@aol.com Previous columns can be found at www.tallapoosa-journal.com.