Let’s talk about – Charles (Chuck) Kensinger

Old?

August 27, 2026

Some of my friends and I have been discussing how we are getting older. Notice that I said “older” and not “old.” Old is a state of mind. I worked with young people for over twenty years when God chose to move me to senior adults while I was in my forties.

I did not feel equal to that task, just as I felt ill-prepared to become a minister as a college student. I decided to change schools and majors and still graduated in four years. That was over fifty years ago. I want to take this column in a different direction and speak of someone that you may think of as old.

Dolly Parton has gone to be with our Lord. Do you understand what that means? Her body is no longer alive; however, she is. She has graduated to a place beyond time and space, where the triune God resides.

Ms. Parton believed His Son when she read that He claimed, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except by Me.” (John 14:6) How do I know this? There are fruits of His Spirit that she possessed. Her declaration that He is her Lord and Savior is not the proof I present to you.

She exhibited love, which is the first fruit that Paul wrote about in Galatians 5:22-23. If you do not understand this word, Paul defines it for you in 1 Corinthians chapter thirteen, which is another letter he wrote to the churches of his time. Her song that she wrote and sang, “I’ll always love you,” is an expression of how she lived her whole life.

I am not a personal friend of Dolly and have never had the privilege of meeting her in this life. It would not surprise me if she were not singing a new song to her Lord that we will not hear until our bodies fail us as hers did and Jesus takes us as He did her.

I remember when I first saw her on the Porter Wagner show in 1967. This thirteen-year-old boy never knew that twenty-three-year-old woman would become the entertainer that we are missing today. Let’s get back to that list of the fruit of the Spirit Paul gave us. He completes the list with joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and faithfulness. These are things we all strive for, and Dolly did as well.

We saw her joy in her music, her peace in the manner in which she addressed her fans as she knew her time here was drawing to a close. She could not name the date as none of us could, but she tried to prepare us for it. I am sure that those close to her saw her lose patience with them and others from time to time, or if not, I hope I learn that someday.

The kindness and goodness that she demonstrated through her life and philanthropic endeavors will continue as her legacy. And Jesus has recognized her faithfulness to Him, her family, friends, and fans by coming to receive her to Himself as He promised in John 14:3.

Welcome home, Ms. Dolly. Enjoy your coat of many colors that your Father made for you, and I am sure it was on your bed in the mansion that Jesus prepared for you and took you to.

Cobra Scare

August 15, 2026

August 15, 1953 – A homeowner in Springfield, Missouri killed a 4½ foot long snake with a hoe. The snake was later identified as a deadly hooded cobra. Springfield was soon terrified as one cobra after another turned up. This all happened a year before I was born.

Reo Mowrer, owner of an exotic pet store a block away from where the first snake was found, denied they were his. As the hunt continued, police played snake charmer music through a loudspeaker to lure the snakes out. Cobras are deaf. Music does not draw the snakes through the music except by the vibrations

Frank Pike holding the stick with the cobra. Carl Gustafson is police officer in middle.

The story made national news and was featured in Life Magazine as eleven snakes were eventually killed. Mike O’Brien, a columnist for the News and Leader, reported in the seventies that the mystery had not been solved about the source of the reptiles.

Mister Mowrer had spoken to reporter O’Brien before his death and had admitted that he had a shipment of exotic snakes delivered just before the scare. The cobras were some of this illegal order. This information was not to be released until after his death.

Officers looking for more snakes

Years later, a Springfield man confessed that as a youth he had released the snakes from the pet shop. He was angry that a fish he bought there had died and the owner refused to refund his money. When I managed a pet store, our policy was to give a forty-eight-hour warranty with the return of the dead fish.

Holding another dead snake

If only that had been in effect in nineteen fifty-three this entire adventure would never have taken place. Now you see why enjoy writing non-fiction more than fiction. You just can’t make this stuff up.

Hillbilly at Heart

August 13, 2026

I remember in the 1960s when The Beverly Hillbillies first aired. As Ozarks Hillbillies, we knew that Jed and Granny and the rest of their family were not the same as us. They did not know about doorbells, modern telephones, or television. I remember when Jethro hooked up a phone for Granny and made it a party line.

Silver Dollar City and Branson, Missouri, are where we learned that we were in the hills. Some call it the Ozark Mountains or plateau. When they brought the cast and crew to these hills to film several episodes in the backdrop of SDC, the whole backstory changed. They were no longer from the Bugtussel and Oxford area.

The mayor of the city, Shad Heller, visited them in California on the set there. Of course, the interior scenes were filmed on a sound stage for the Ozarks episodes as well as the other episodes. This is common for most shows. Exteriors are often shot on location, while it is easier to use sound stages for the various interior and other shots.

Around that time, Judge Justin Ruark, a native of Neosho, eloquently defined an Ozarks Hillbilly as “an individual who has learned the real luxury of doing without the entangling complications of things which the dependent and over-pressured city dweller is required to consider as necessities.”

“The hillbilly foregoes the hard grandeur of high buildings and canyon streets in exchange for wooded hills and verdant valleys. In place of creeping traffic, he accepts the rippling flow of the wandering stream.” I have lived most of my life inside Springfield, the third largest city in our state.

In the last sixty years, most of the Queen City of the Ozarks has become more of an urban city and less of what we thought of as a rural community. Do not try to insult us when you say the term Hillbilly. We are proud to be from the Ozarks, where in twenty minutes we can be in the country with fields, forests, and streams or lakes.

The larger cities have parks where some of these amenities are available, but I can walk less than a mile from my home, which is in Greene County, and go for a walk in the woods or beside a creek. The Ozarks have many small communities that are a lot like the ones Jethro and Ellie Mae came from originally. It only takes ten minutes to reach the heart of a big city.

Silver Dollar City is no longer the tiny community it was in the early sixties. On my first visit there as a boy, we parked where the Marketplace now is and walked directly onto Main Street in front of the SDC Hotel. Shad’s blacksmith shop, Copper Kettle Candy Store, Marvel Cave, and one or two rides were all that was there.

When I traveled to Bradford, PA in 1975, I was asked about my hometown. Bradford had a population of 25,000, and Springfield was 135,000 then. I told them it was a small town, and when I stated the population as of the 1970 census, they realized that my hometown was more than these Yankees realized.

We may be hillbillies; we are not small-town hicks. Springfieldians live in the third largest city in Missouri, with the largest school system in this state. We have a lot to be proud of and should tell everyone that our metro area has been counted with a population of over 500,000 residents. Not bad for a bunch of hillbillies.

Are you your parents?

August 11, 2026

I like to ask people if they have looked in the mirror and seen one of their parents. I am not trying to insult them by saying that they are getting old. That would not be an insult, by the way. There is only one way to avoid becoming older: die now. Death is inevitable, and aging is as well.

If I did not have a good relationship with both of my parents, I would not bring them up in this way. My Dad was not intelligent in the normal way that I think of the word. He never wrote a book, graduated from college, or even high school. He was a city boy and served his country in World War II the best he could.

He was a swabby in the Navy on a repair ship. Yes, he was drafted and assigned to the US Navy. When I thought I might be drafted, I was also talking to them during the Vietnam conflict. I wanted to travel to the Far East but not under government invitation. I wanted to be assigned as a journalist on the front lines.

Dad did his job, came home to Springfield, Missouri, and married our mother. She had to lie about her education to get a factory job that only required a high school diploma. She did not have that either. Dad drove a truck, and Mom had been a waitress and cook in cafes before Zenith hired her.

I can’t drive a truck. Read my column, “I watched a truck driver today,” for more on this. I can cook and started my working career as a fry cook. I ended it as a purchasing manager, was an operations manager for a company I spent twenty-five years with, and graduated with a BA. This was all thanks to their example.

I am not my parents; however, I love them dearly, think of them often, and frequently comment on them in these articles and in my books. Without them, I would not be who I am. The best parts of me are due to them and their influence. My hope is that after reading this, you will say the same of yours.

They were not perfect or spectacular. They never did anything more than what most of us do: work, raise a family, and obey the law most of the time. They never did illegal drugs, drank alcohol to excess, or were arrested. They both served on juries when summoned and took us to church and accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

That will not get you the parent of the year award from anyone except your own kids and sometimes not even them. That is the point of this column. What have you done lately to honor your folks? Maybe your parents were abusive and failed you miserably. I’m sorry if that is your story. Mine did not.

I recently spent some time with a professional counselor, and she did, like they all do, try to help us with our problems. She asked about them and my relationship with them growing up, abuse, and substance abuse. There is nothing in my experience in their home that is anything to cause me the difficulties I am having.

Professional counseling is often called for when we are dealing with life’s troubles. Don’t avoid it if you need it. Find a trained and qualified professional who is a good fit with you. Let them direct you to handle your issues, whatever they may be. I’m working on mine, and I hope your parents and you do the same.

Republicrats are scrambling

July 21, 2026

Donald Trump is preparing to accuse every state of rigging the election this year when his party is defeated in Congress and the Senate. His bill would allow him to violate our Constitution and force the court system to, once again, keep him from overstepping the powers that this document gives the president.

He has announced that he will not sign any more of the bills that our legally elected legislators have approved until they give in to his childish temper tantrum. Parents, how much of your time is spent fighting to get your children to listen to you? Is our Chief Executive acting like a spoiled brat?

Let’s look at the problems in our country. Skyrocketing inflation, severe weather, poverty, the breakdown of our families, and the list goes on. These are the things that we want our government to address. The question is how? How do we go about solving these problems?

This bill that President Trump wants passed will solve which of these difficulties? That’s correct, none of them. Its purpose is to give our federal officials more control over elections. According to our Constitution, that right falls to the state governments. We are The United States of America.

We will start with our economic problems. Many people are having trouble paying rent, providing food, and maintaining their homes. Our Missouri state legislature has given us the opportunity in our Amendment Five to eliminate our state income tax and save a lot of the citizens a great deal of money.

The problem is that to accomplish this, all we the people must do is revoke a Constitutional Amendment we passed decades ago that does not allow them to tax us without asking us first. I would like my taxes reduced. I am retired, and my wife is also. Our state taxes on income are practically nonexistent.

This would have been great when we were working, or would it? How much money is left at the end of your month? For us, it was little to none. Another way of putting this is to consider how much must be paid each month when the paycheck is spent. For us, that was often a week or more. If you stop taking my state taxes out of my pay each week and increase the cost of food, fuel, and rent by an equal amount, you have not helped me, the taxpayer.

This bill won’t help me; it will aid elected officials in raising more money from people who can afford to finance their election campaigns. They are the ones who are paying for the ads where a little old lady says that she will have more money for her grandchildren.

Give me a break. Do I look that stupid? Whether it is in the national legislature or our state houses, we need to see a lie when we are told one. Stop the ones who are lying to us by voting them out of office. Here in Missouri, August fourth is our primary election. Do not allow these corrupt individuals to keep their jobs.

Let’s give someone else the chance to represent us, and do not listen to the names that their opponents are being called. I am talking about “woke,” “liberal,” and “Democrat,” here in the seventh district of Missouri.

What names are your incumbents calling others where you live? And what are they trying to get you to believe that is not true? If you look closely, you will see their lies as well.

Amendments for August

July 13, 2026

We have four amendments on our Missouri State August primary ballot this year. I am going to explain what the ballot wording means and why there is a controversy on these issues. I recommend that you read the actual amendments and not just what appears on our ballots.

Amendment One is one that we have been voting on every ten years for decades. It approves the renewal of a one-tenth of one percent sales tax for Conservation. This continuing tax has accomplished much for our state.

The next issue is Constitutionally required to allow Jackson County to elect a county assessor. The county has already voted to do this, but the state constitution requires a statewide vote to allow them to do this. This is Amendment 2.

Our General Assembly is asking us to approve Amendment four which will limit our current ability to add issues to the ballot that legislators do not want us to be able to vote on. Advertisements tell us that this will prevent out-of-state groups from influencing our state laws. The problem is that these ads are paid for by Political Action Committees that are registered in other states.

Another provision that concerns many of us is that it requires every congressional district to approve the voter endorsed issues. That means that voters in any one district can defeat every other district’s votes. This is not one person, one vote. It would allow one vote to override hundreds of others.

The only good thing in this bill is the requirement to give voters a copy of the exact wording of every issue that we force them to allow us to vote on. If the legislators put it on the ballot, they control what we can know about what we are voting for. It sounds like they want more control of us.

We are also being asked to allow changes to laws that have been in effect for years. One that we approved is called the Hancock Amendment. When we, the people, voted it in it required our state legislators to ask our permission to raise our taxes above a certain level without our permission.

Amendment five will allow them to ignore this law and do anything they want as they did before we restricted their powers. They tell us they will “phase” out the state income tax and ask us to give them Carte Blanche to add as many sales and use taxes as the legislators want.

This amendment will also allow them to force local property tax cuts without the permission of residents. I usually ask for an issues only ballot in the primary elections. I plan on taking the Republican ballot because my representative and senator that approved these issues are Republicans. They are not representing me, and I want them to be fired.

Once again, the organizations promoting a yes vote are from other states. I think we need a state law that does not allow out-of-staters from lying to us about issues that will make them money at our expense. When the hail hit this spring my wife and I did not allow any of those contractors that are not based here to even quote on our repairs. Why would we want to listen to foreigners when our President is doing such a good job of throwing them out of our country.

Get involved

July 1, 2026

Have you seen the series of insurance commercials that make it seem they don’t believe young homeowners should emulate their parents? When Cindy and I purchased our first home, we did it the way Mom and Dad had. We signed a contract for deed because we did not have a down payment.

The commercials I am speaking of criticize these young adults for getting involved. My wife and I encouraged our children to get involved in school, church, and with their friends. I do not get why having our children do things the way we do them is bad.

Maybe you did not think your parents were cool when you were growing up. Let me tell you about our girls. I was a teacher at church most of their lives. Now I am the proud father of three women who are teachers. One has been an elementary school teacher for over ten years. Her oldest sister began teaching high school a few years ago. The youngest is a stay-at-home mom who homeschools her kids.

There is the man who wants to help the server at a coffee joint find who a drink is for. I would not do this, but I would watch the entrance and the hall leading to the restrooms. When someone isn’t there to pick up their order, that is usually where they are. If I am alone, I go to the facility before ordering.

When I walk into a room, I look for someone who is not involved in conversations or other activities. Especially if I am also a stranger. It is difficult for many to strike up discussions with those they do not know. My years in sales, making cold calls, taught me to speak to anyone about everything.

I have thousands of stories about people I have met and the stories they have told me and how I began talking to them. I have shared many of these in these columns. One that I want to repeat here is about my oldest daughter when she and her husband had a company with a friend.

Cindy and I were talking to her about a trip they were all three taking to a convention. I knew the guys went to those to meet prospective customers, and I asked why she was going. They had a female buyer that had been difficult to reach, and they asked her to start a conversation weeks before this gathering. They were planning on closing the deal while there, and she had been asked by the lady if she was going. That is why she was.

She told me that it was my influence that made her learn to make contacts easily. When my girls were growing up, I always responded to their comments about other kids that seemed to have difficulties getting to know others. Our conversations with our girls encouraged them to make new friends by drawing them into the groups they are in.

I wish to encourage you to become involved with people. You may not be the one in your groups that can draw new folks in. If you aren’t, do not be the one that discourages friends from including those that need to belong somewhere.

Cliff Claven made it to visit the bar, Cheers, almost every day, where everybody knew his name. I walked into a PA’s office one day and met the new man. His office was covered in St. Louis Blues memorabilia. I left making a new client and knowing more about hockey than ever before. Try it, you’ll like it.

Take your toys and go home, Donald

June 29, 2026

Have you noticed the tantrums that the man who holds the office of Chief Executive has been throwing lately? He’s continued to lie about everything from how the 2016 election ended to having a photograph taken in Europe. He has his point of view, while others disagree with how he sees reality.

Now he has come back to the U.S. and decided not to sign a law that the Senate and House had both approved. He’ll sign it as soon as the Trumpites browbeat those who don’t agree with him into agreeing on another bill that does not seem to be very popular.

This is just another example of the childish attitude of a man who is old enough to know better. Spoiled brat behavior is often seen in preschoolers. Grown men who have been elected President of the United States rarely pitch these kinds of fits in front of the press. We know today that some of the former Presidents did this in private.

Donald Trump no longer has a filter that most of us use to prevent the embarrassment of foot-in-mouth syndrome. I’ve been a non-Partisan voter for all my voting career. When I registered to vote in August of 1972, they tried to tell me at the county clerk’s office that I had to declare a party to be eligible to vote.

Having my high school diploma did not necessarily guarantee that I knew voting law. My history teachers made it a priority to teach us about the new laws that were in effect after the problems in the sixties. I asked to speak to the county clerk, and he told me I was correct that I did not need to declare a party.

I currently serve as an election judge for Greene County, Missouri, where most voters are Republicans. When I signed up for this job, they needed to know my party affiliation, and I told them I was non-Partisan and that is what I am listed as. To me, that means I should be able to work with a Republican or a Democrat. I have always been paired with a member of the GOP because here, there are always more of them and fewer of us.

It does not matter to me whether Trump belongs to any party. I have known for over forty years that he is a dishonest, lying businessman that I would never trust, even if my pastor told me to. For the last three elections, when most of my friends thought he was the only choice, I disagreed with them. I continue to believe that he never should have been elected either time.

This year, as always, I want to overthrow all the political parties. It is not just the way our groups work against each other. After fifty-plus years of watching politics, I have seen US and other countries’ politicians use party affiliation to bypass the people they represent. I’m tired of it. We need to learn this as citizens.

Did you know that Trump used to be a Democrat, and so was former President Ronald Regan. When the Republican Party was formed, it was the party for the downtrodden. The Democrats were the ones who supported slavery. They continue to flop back and forth on almost every issue. I can trust a candidate but not the party he belongs to. They sell their souls to the parties to get money to buy their election. It must stop.

Mountains and molehills

June 22, 2026

I’m one of those baby boomers, and I am proud of it. Unlike some of you, I grew up in a time when things were much easier. We weren’t worried about gunmen at school or in the streets. All we had to be concerned about was whether the USSR would decide to drop atomic bombs on us.

It never happened because we had the first nuclear devices and had used them in Japan. They knew our work. Some of the phrases we oldsters use may sound like your teenage speaking does to us. I thought I would discuss them descriptively.

We all know what a mountain is, even though in the Ozark Mountains, they are only hills. Not ones made by moles and yet they are not mountains, either. A mole digs in the ground and tunnels close to the surface, making small, raised patches of earth that are called mole hills. The saying is, “Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill.”

The point of the saying is not to blow things out of proportion. We all tend to give extra power to people and things that are not that important. I have had many bosses over the years who were not liked by some of their employees. This was one of the complaints that often reared its ugly head.

Why were such trivial things so important to those in charge? Many times, the smallest mistakes seemed to be those that management stresses about the most. I have another one that you may not know. “Putting the cart before the horse.”

This one sounds easy to interpret to me, but I have heard it all my life. We all know that if the wagon is ahead of the horse, it cannot push it. He must pull it to move it. What it means is to keep things in their properly ordained places. One time I heard this was when a neighbor’s son got his girlfriend pregnant. That was not accepted in the 1960s.

Another horse saying was, “Hold your horses.” This goes all the way back to when my grandparents were responsible for securing the livestock in their teens. When I was eight, I never thought of them being that young; today, it is much easier. This one means that we need to wait patiently.

“Minding your P’s and Q’s” is a throwback to the days of British public houses. Ale was served in pints and quarts, and the bartender would warn overactive patrons by using this phrase. Get it, Pints and Quarts could be knocked off the bar or tables. In my day, it meant that we should behave. As a child, I heard it a lot.

There are sayings about saving money and not being ripped off. We need more of these today with all the scammers around. “Don’t take any wooden nickels” is the way we said it. Springfield, MO, where I live, had a restaurant called the Wooden Nickel, and I still have one of their basswood nickels with an Indian head on it.

The last one I will mention is “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.” That is an expression of surprise like “Just shoot my foot,” or “When hell freezes over.” By the way, or BTW, I am old enough to have gone to see “Disney’s Monkey’s Uncle” when it first debuted in theatres. Check that one out on Disney Plus.

250 years and counting

June 19, 2026

On July 4^th of 1776, Thomas Jefferson and others signed their own death warrants when he wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Let’s look at that statement and how this country has proven and tried to refute that statement.

The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union were ratified and came into force on March 1, 1781. James Madison and Alexander Hamilton were instrumental in proposing a radical new concept, a constitution that was finally accepted by the thirteen states and became operational in 1789.

That was the year that George Washington and John Adams became the first President and Vice-President of this nation. The Constitution originally had the two top candidates filling these offices. Amendment twelve modified this, and the electoral college voted for both a President and a Vice President in 1803.

The Bill of Rights was the first ten amendments to the document, which were ratified by the states in 1791 and guarantee personal freedoms, such as freedom of speech, the right to publish, practice religion, possess firearms, and to assemble.

What most of us do not know is that the Tenth Amendment states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” These were originally referred to as States’ Rights and are continually opposed by many in the federal government.

In 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was elected as our sixteenth President, the Confederate States of America was formed in February of 1861 by South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. In April, hostilities between these and the Union began with an attack on Fort Sumter by the Confederates.

After the war began, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina decided to join the Confederacy. The major reason for cessation was the belief that Lincoln’s administration would support the abolitionist movement’s desire to end slavery nationwide. This was considered one of those states’ rights issues mentioned in the Tenth Amendment. When the conflict ended in 1865, the Union had declared the ownership of other humans a violation of our Constitution, and Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation effectively ended this practice.

The Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution sealed this as law and solved some of the problems still in the former Confederate states. The assassination of Lincoln again tested our resiliency as a country.

One last test for our land that happened before I was born was on December 7, 1940, when the Japanese attacked our naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, forcing Franklin Delano Roosevelt into requesting Congress to declare war on the Axis powers. Many believe that without the U.S. involvement in World War II, even more countries would have fallen.

Charles (Chuck) Kensinger

Walk With a Servant

Category: Let’s talk about