Have I told y’all about the time I met John Wayne?

Yeah….”THAT” John Wayne.

The Duke. George Washington “G.W” McLintock. Rooster Cogburn….Sean Thornton…..John Chisum….

It was 1976 and I was 12 years old.

It was also the very same year of the bicentintennial birthday of the United States and the very same summer that my grandmother took us all to Disney World in Orlando, Florida and I discovered that really real magic existed in the world.

Okay, back to The Duke….

I was a Boy Scout in Shiloh, Georgia. My mom was a den mother and there were about 20 of us boys, all told.

We were at Callaway Gradens, Georgia for a Scout Jamboree and hoping to take the checkered flag in the Pine Wood derby.

There was a whole bunch of scouts there of course, from all over SouthWest Georgia, hoping for the very same sweet taste of…