There Are Some Things Money Can Buy

I rode by the house where I grew up the other day. I stopped to take a picture. My goodness there was a lot of living in that house.


It takes a heap o’ livin’ in a house t’make it home. Edgar Guest wrote a poem that began with that line and I can still remember my second grade teacher, Miss Hollis, reading it to us.

Edgar had it right for sure.

The day of my daddy’s funeral I remember a statement made by our friend Dennis Parks. I made the comment that we would probably sell the house and I jokingly asked Dennis, who lives in Atlanta, if he wanted to buy it.

He said the house would not be worth much to him in Reynolds but he would pay his last dollar to buy the home that was created here.

There are just some things money can’t buy.

The kitchen was the center of all activity. I already mentioned how well Jessie Mae cooked but Mama could cook too. We did some serious eating in this house.

But we also had some serious fun.

After dinner whoever happened to be at the house on a particular night would gather in the den or the living room and the back scratching and the head scratching would begin.

And so would the stories.

People now pay me a lot of money to tell the stories that were told in our living room. The funny thing is when my book came out, our friends who hung around our house would start laughing while reading the beginning of a story because they already knew how it would end. Anybody that sat around the Goddard living room had heard every one of those stories.

Although we sold the house after our parents died, stories continue to be spontaneously told wherever Goddard’s gather.

Earlier this year, I went to my brother’s house in Atlanta to speak to his wife’s book club. View from a Hearse was the book of the month. Jaye decorated the house with funeral fans and Reynolds signs and all kinds of funeral stuff. All their neighbors came. Most had a copy of my book in their hand when they walked in the house. After an appropriate funeral meal of fried chicken and tater salad, they all gathered in the den to hear me speak.

But this was a different speaking engagement. My brother George was in the room. And he told as many stories as I did that night.

I had heard all his stories and he had heard mine.

But it doesn’t matter how many times you hear them. They make people laugh. Side hurting laughter. I actually left that night with everyone still in the den and George was telling another story. He had taken over. And I loved it.

I have a memory from my childhood that burns in my memory bank. It is of my Mama tucking me in at night when I was a little boy. She would leave the room and I would go to sleep with the sound of laughter coming out of the living room.

It was the best sleeping medicine a little boy could have.

Laughter is the best medicine. I got a lot of doses of that medicine as I grew up in our incredible home.

Money cannot buy a home like that.

But I have discovered that people pay money to laugh. And I’m laughing all the way to the bank.