In 868 A.D., according to Chinese historical records, a princess was said to have played a “leaf game.” One of the earliest known references to playing cards.

Since then, there have been just a few more sessions of folks gathering with a deck.

In the small, red brick house on Beech Street in Ashdown, Arkansas, many a game of spades, hearts, bridge, and canasta went well into the night.

Games were an inexpensive way for adults to gather at the Formica dinette table ...

In the early 90s, there was a self-help, relationship book called, “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.” The goal of publishing this was for the author to show how differently men and women communicate.

Anyone who grew up in the South doesn’t need a book for this.

Now, technically, men and women are both speaking English. But if you’ve ever sat in a kitchen in East Texas or in Ashdown, Arkansas, and listened to a husband and wife discuss curtains, ...

Southern folks don’t need proper nouns. We have whatchamacallits and thingamajigs.

My grandfather had the only blacksmith shop in Ashdown, Arkansas. That’s where I learned the important terminology.

Papa’s shop, didn’t have labeled drawers. There were coffee cans. Each one held something useful, Bolts of every length, nuts that didn’t quite match anything, washers that had seen better days, and little pieces of metal whose original purpose had been forgotten somewhere around the Eisenhower Administration.

“Hand me that piece right there,” Papa would ...

There wasn’t anything accidental about blackberry season in our family. When harvest time came, dad had the harvest trip mapped out long before the berries ever ripened.

The same narrow country roads, year after year. Ditches, fence lines, and creek beds. None of them were the main roads in or around Ashdown, Arkansas. These were the back roads. Roads that originated as wagon paths in the 1800s, and wound their way through what just decades before had been thick, Little River ...

New music coming out used to be an event. Most of the time, you and your friends knew it was coming and you were waiting, money-in-hand, at the record shop to buy it.

I worked in the radio business for several decades beginning in the 1970s, and became very well acquainted with how records were produced and promoted.

Radio, television, newspaper, and magazines were driving forces in promoting new music. Today, we can open our electronic devices and get the entire World ...

Luby’s. Bryce’s. Wyatt’s. Piccadilly.

All cafeterias. All gone.

But if you grew up in the South in the 50s, 60s, or 70s, odds are you had a favorite tray of food at your favorite cafeteria.

For those of us in Ashdown, Arkansas, it was Luby’s in Texarkana. First, we went to the Oaklawn Village location. Later, it was at Central Mall.

The menu options were the same either place; at any of their sites, for that matter. So, you could get your favorite entree, ...

Maybe it was different when we only had three channels to watch, and that’s why TV ads used to be better. Or maybe people who make things are just cheaper and lazier than they used to be.

But one thing’s for sure: commercials used to be great.

When my parents got our first color television in 1968, it opened up a whole new world for my sister and me. The RCA console TV weighed as much as a Buick and sat in ...

Folks raised in the South learned early that life didn’t hand you much. But if you were observant and hard working it could give you everything you need. Most of us needed the same things, but it was each group’s secret ingredients that made them special for their branch of the family tree.

Land, water, and people around you held knowledge. You just needed to listen, learn, and apply.

A cousin might show you where to find crawdads. Your dad explained how ...

Lee Iacocca gave us two American classics: the Ford Mustang and the Chrysler minivan. The first was intended to compete with the Chevy Corvair Monza. The latter was designed to take the place of vans and station wagons that were becoming less practical for many families.

Most people today probably could not identify a Corvair Monza if they were riding in it. The last one rolled off the assembly line in 1969 and it quickly faded into automotive history.

Full size vans ...

From the 1940s through the 1970s, Southern grandmothers always had candy dishes on the living room coffee table.

The tradition dates back to the late 1800s, when Emily Post etiquette books dictated that you kept some sweets in the parlor for when company came. Simple sugar cubes or bonbons were the norm then. A hostess was expected to have something small and pleasant to offer visitors, and candy was inexpensive enough that almost any household could manage it.

Then, the candy wasn’t ...