Sunday morning drive time ... * * * AT THE moment I have Willie Nelson on the stereo and he’s singing “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain.”

In that is a memory …

It is one of the first songs I remember hearing on the radio … by Roy Acuff on the Grand Ole Opry “from the Ryman Auditorium up there in Nashville.”

Which shoves a long-ago great-uncle of mine, William Terry Smith, into my thoughts.

Family legend is “Uncle Terry” never lost a fiddling convention, could do that “hoe-down stuff” with anybody.

But on a Saturday afternoon, on his front porch with several of his kids accompanying, he would turn his “country” fiddle into a violin … slow, dreamy stuff that I still hear in my quiet moments.

He was also the best around at pitching horseshoes and I’m told that in cow pasture baseball, he had a curve that was un-hittable.

Maybe I’ve told you all of that before, but not today, anyway … so with due (or undue) credit, I can’t be charged with self-plagiarizing, huh?

* * * ONE MORE tombstone epitaph a friend mailed me, this one from a Nova Scotia cemetery:

Here lies Ezekial Aikle

Age 102

Only The Good Die Young * * * A FORECAST:

Alabama will defeat Texas A&M (after whomping Virginia Tech in its opener), go undefeated, and beat Ohio State in the 2014 National Championship Game.

You think Nick Saban versus Urban Myer won’t sell a few tickets and burn out a few TV tubes?

Stay tuned … and I’m ready for September right now.

* * * IT’S PERSONAL but there’s a young lady out there who sort of gets my chest all puffed up with pride when she’s around or her name is mentioned.

Her name is Anna Laurie Cotton and, in case you missed it, she was listed on the Donoho School President’s List … all A’s for the first semester. That she is also blooming into a drop-dead beauty doesn’t hurt anything either.

And there is an early memory of her as a performer at the age of four, maybe five.

One night, at a family gathering, she cranked up the stereo and did a bit of singing and dancing for us. Once finished, she “passed the hat.” If you didn’t drop something green in the bucket, you got a look of utter disdain.

When I’m reminded she is now in the ninth grade, I wonder where the years went.

The list from Donoho had 14 kids from years nine-12 on the all-A list. That’s impressive. There are lots of bright kids, good kids, out there. We just don’t hear about them …not nearly enough.

* * * A BUDDY of mine claims most traffic jams are caused by “little elderly women in white Buicks.”

Those are his words, not mine.

‘Course, I didn’t have to report that, did I?

* * * A COUPLE of TV blurbs I would be delighted to never hear again:

“He’s the best in all of football.”

What’s wrong with:

“He’s the best in football.”

And:

“He’s 90 years young.”

From the day you’re born you’re getting older … and that’s a bullet you can’t dodge.

Both run me up the wall.

* * * GUYS, you now have just four days to go buy the candles and roses . . . if you get my drift.

Valentine’s Day is Thursday.

Thanks for visiting …

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George Smith can be reached at 256-239-5286 or email: gsmith731@gmail.com