Little Jimmy Dickens and his fabulous Christmas lights display ... The tale of a big heart in a pint-sized package offers one more reason to buy 'Pigrims, Pickers and Honky-Tonk Heroes'

Great photographer Bill Steber took this photo of Little Jimmy Dickens by the Ryman. He and his equally artistic colleague John Partipilo have several photos in my book, Pilgrims, Pickers and Honky-Tonk Heroes, which you can order at amazon.com. There are many never-before seen photos from these gentlemen and from families of my subjects in the book.

A dash of melancholy hit me – not particularly unusual – when I drove by Little Jimmy Dickens’ house the other day, and I remembered his magnificent annual Christmas lights and decorations display. I thought about the day, late in his life, that he and I spoke about the fact he no longer could decorate. The neighborhood children and orphans from across the highway were going to have to do without.
He wasn’t happy about it, but age had caught up with him. The Christmas lights are just a part of the chapter in my book – Pilgrims, Pickers and Honky-Tonk Heroes -- about Tater, as his pal, Hank Williams, had nicknamed him.
The book would make a great holiday gift if your giftee likes country music, Nashville and human beings.
Here’s just a section from the chapter about my friend, Little Jimmy:

Again, he thought about the lack of lights on his property. Just two generous wreaths and nothing else Yuletide could be seen from outside his beloved home.
“Oh, it’s a lot of work. It takes me about a week to put them up,” he said, adding he didn’t know how many lights he normally displayed.
“Golly, I have no idea. I just kept putting them up until I ran out,” always on the day after Thanksgiving.
He looked around his yard and then over toward Franklin Road and the orphanage – the Tennessee Baptist Children’s Home -- on the other side.
“I like it when the kids in the neighborhood come by and look at them. And down at the Orphans Home, well, they bring the children by and see them lights,” he said.
“That was worth it. They would just bring them buses by. That’s the part I miss more than anything. The people in the neighborhood thanking me for putting them up and the kids enjoying them.
“That meant a lot to me.”
There is a long pause and a twinkle. “I think I’ll probably do them again next year.”
Unfortunately, Little Jimmy never put the lights up again on the spacious home he and Mona shared. There was no lack of holiday spirit.
He just got old. And tired. And his health began to diminish. He kept on going out to the big auditorium for the Opry almost until his death, though.
“Until he died, he was the oldest member of the Opry cast,” someone wrote after his death on January 2, 2015, days after his final show with the venerable radio broadcast.
And, as was his way, when his final Opry broadcast came to an end, he didn’t holler out to the fans: “Good night.”
His normal farewell was “We appreciate you.”
And for the better part of a century, country (and rockabilly) fans appreciated him right back.
I’m just so glad that there were many occasions when I encountered him offstage, not in stage gear, of course, his Nudie stuff in the closet at home.
Even so, he worked the crowd, whether at the Opry or in the frozen food aisle. “I love people,” said the fellow who finally decided at age 90 that climbing up on a ladder and putting up Christmas lights was a mighty tall task.