It was late in 1978 when I received the call offering me a job at the paper mill in Western Kentucky. That was the year of the three Popes. Pope Paul VI died at the age of 80 and John Paul I was chosen to be the new Pope. He was only in the Vatican 34 days before he unexpectedly died. He was succeeded by Karol Wojtyla of Poland who took the name John Paul II.

Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Israeli Premier Menachen Begin signed the “Framework for Peace” at Camp David in a summit led by President Carter; Jim Jones and his followers’ committed mass suicide at Jonestown, Guyana and a snail darter held up the construction of the Tellico Dam in Tennessee.

The Yankees defeated the LA Dodgers 4-3 in the World Series and the winner of the Kentucky Derby was - Affirmed. Annie Hall was the movie to see that year and Maya Angelou’s book, And Still I Rise was published. It was also the year Norman Rockwell passed away, Paul Simon was singing Slip Slidn’ Away, a United States postage stamp had risen to the unbelievable price of fifteen cents and gas was 63 cents a gallon.

On the scale of things our little move to Kentucky was insignificant, but for us it was an earth shaking event.

The job meant a new future for us and the chance to start a family. I turned in my two weeks’ notice and my wife and I began to make arrangements for our move. My mother-in-law was terminally ill with cancer and the move meant my wife would be able to spend more time with her during her final days. Fortunately, we were able to rent a small one room apartment close to her in Lone Oak, Kentucky.

We made plans for our belongings to be placed in storage until we could find a house. Then began the process of notifying our family and church that we would be leaving Winston County.

Over the next two weeks we boxed up everything we owned. I thought we would live in Kentucky about five years, Tina could be with her mother during her illness, and I would make enough money to return to the farm. When the day finally came to leave it hit me that I may never live on the farm again.

As I walked through the home where I grew up one last time I was overcome with emotions. It was the house my grandfather and father had built. It was also the house in which they died. The rooms were empty for the first time in nearly 60 years and my footsteps echoed on the hardwood floors as I walked through each of them one last time. It was beyond eerie.

When I came to my old bedroom I remembered how as a small boy my mother would come and check on us just before the lights were turned off for the night. She would say our prayers with us. “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” I could almost see her as she was back then - a young mother of three little boys.

In the stillness I could hear friends and relatives from the past. All the good times and sad times we shared there were flashing before me. I guess the most vivid thing I remembered was the time my wife and I were awakened in the middle of the night and heard my father’s footsteps in the hall outside our bedroom door. The incident had occurred a year after he had passed away.

Standing there, in the back of my head I was hoping I could see or speak to him one last time. I wished he would appear and tell me if leaving the farm was the right thing to do. I stood there a long time waiting and hoping for him to materialize.

But nothing happened. I was on my own.

As I turned to walk out, my footsteps echoed in that empty old farmhouse and reminded me of that night a year earlier when Tina and I had heard him outside our bedroom door. I felt as if I were being watched. I walked out onto the porch and down the steps for the last time. Part of me wanted to stay. Part of me wanted to look back to see if he was there, but I wouldn’t let myself. I knew I had to leave.

There have been only a few times in my life I have felt a presence as strong as that. Once was when I visited Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. I had gone to the Devil's Den on the south side of the park and climbed up a trail to look out over the battlefield.

As I walked up the trail to get a better view I had an overwhelming feeling that I was not alone. Goose bumps crawled all over me as I made my way to the summit. I stood there looking across the field and I knew I was not alone. It was overwhelming looking out where thousands of people had died. Call it a paranormal experience or what you may; I could sense something all around me.

The other time I had that feeling was when I had visited the Vietnam Memorial in Washington. There was something about that monument and those bronze statues of the soldiers looking back at that black wall on which thousands of names were inscribed that made me feel just as I had at Gettysburg. It was powerful, moving, and inexplicable. I felt as if I were standing among all those men whose names were inscribed upon that wall.

That's the way I felt that day as I walked away from the house where I had grown up. I could feel a presence there. I knew I was not alone.

I walked out to the truck, got in, and hesitated a moment before turning the key. It was late November and the leaves on the old oak trees that surrounded the house had turned brown. Some were beginning to fall. Others were still hanging on. The few that had turned loose were blowing in the wind across the yard.

I had the same choice. I could hang on or let go and let the wind take me somewhere else. My eyes were welling with tears and I could barely see where I was going driving down the hill towards the highway. I knew I had to go with the wind. I had to let go and let it carry me to a different place.

God had opened another door for me and I knew I had to travel through it.

Standing by my mother’s grave on that cold New Year’s Day in 1999 I knew I had made the right choice. My wife and three daughters were with me. Relatives, friends and many neighbors I had grown up with in Calvary Community were there, too. I realized I still missed Winston County and the farm, but to everything there is a season, a time to sow and a time to reap, a time to be born and a time to die, a time to hang on and a time to let go –to let go and let the wind take me wherever it would - beyond the cotton fields.