When I was a kid, things didn’t break as often as they do now. If you bought something at Sears Lawn and Garden, you needed to run over it with an 18-wheeler to render it nonfunctional.

(Insert the sound of Tim Allen here)

Such used to be the case with lawn sprinklers. Made of steel or cast iron, the lawn sprinklers of the 50s and 60s were solid for watering your yard, and for making you dance when you stepped on one ...

In the South, the only thing you can say that’s considered bigger fightin’ words than, “Why didn’t you put beans in your chili?” is to speak ill of dry rub on ribs.

First, let me say that I don’t fall on either side of the chili or rib fences. I can consume chili with beans just as easily as I can devour St. Louis ribs with dry rub or a rack that’s been basted.

There are plenty of other things worth fighting ...

I’ve always worked at least two, sometimes three jobs. My dad said it built character. Maybe so, but what I noticed was that it built my bank account.

In 1972 when I was 11, I began mowing yards, raking leaves, or doing anything else that paid. There were plenty of elderly folks in my hometown who were no longer able to do this type of work, and I was only too glad to help them.

That same year a man in my ...

The yards had been mostly vacant on the street around the corner from our house, save for the tricycles, small bikes, and other toddler transportation.

But the warmer weather brought out the owners of these wheeled treasures.

On my way home, motion caught my left eye. She appeared to be about five years old. Straddling her bike, she stopped to wave at me.

I tapped the brakes on my old truck so that she could see my quick wave back.

She smiled. I smiled. ...

Rush Limbaugh single-handedly revived AM radio. In 1988, his syndicated talk show brought people back to a place they had left for the FM dial.

AM radio once was all we had. The advantage of the AM spectrum was the number of stations you could pick up, especially at night.

I listened to stations from all over the country. Late at night, stations from Chicago, Denver, New Orleans, St. Louis, and other distant cities would come in loud and clear. And even ...

We now take them for granted. But not so long ago, a washer and dryer were a luxury.

Actually, a washer was a luxury. A dryer was for rich people.

The small, red brick house we lived in on Beech Street when I was young had a clothesline. Most post-World War II homes had a clothesline. It was located behind our laundry room, which was in the back of our freestanding garage.

The family who owned the property before we had it had ...