Owen, 51, lives with his wife, Kelly, in a Tudor-style mansion just down the road from where he grew up and where his mama still lives — on a Lookout Mountain farm not far from Little River Canyon. He raises cattle, like his daddy before him. His only regret is that his father, Gladstone Owen, died just as Alabama was beginning to make its mark on country music with hits such as “Mountain Music,” “Close Enough To Perfect” and the unofficial state anthem, “My Home’s in Alabama.”
Martha Owen, 69, is a simple woman who wears her salt-and-pepper hair in a high bun and is known all over the county for her home-made apple pies. She lives in a modest red-brick house, with a vegetable garden tilled by her only son. Her two daughters, Reba and Rachel, live with their families within shouting distance. When the whole clan gets together, they love to tell stories about growing up poor, in a house filled with laughter and music and love.
Mrs. Owen recalls how her son, as a boy, loved to whittle with knives, which he was forever losing in the rough and tumble playground of the family farm. So Randy’s parents tied his knife around his neck. Family photos depict a tar-topped lad romping in the grass, his knife flopping from a chain in the wind
“When the little ol’ feller was about 8 years old, we had a big kitchen in our house, with a table set out in the middle of the floor. When I’d get after him about something, Randy would take off, and me and him would go round and round the table,” Mrs. Owen recalls.
“We had screen doors, but they didn’t latch, and he’d run outside so I couldn’t catch him. But one day, he’d done something I was after him about, and I took off after him, and I meant I was going to catch him. We went round and round, and he ran to that door, and it so happened that somebody had fixed the latch on it. I think we made two circles around the table and he hit that screen door and what he did, he broke it in half. His feet went under the bottom, and his head branded against that screen. It burnt a screen print on his head.
“I didn’t want to whip him then, poor little feller. I was so glad he wasn’t hurt. He wore that brand for several days.”
Owen and his mother laugh and laugh at that story.
