I can still smell the aroma of the freshly opened box of crayons and two sharpened Husky pencils. The distinctive scent of Crayola Crayons and shaved wood just smelled like the beginning of education.

Noisily rifling through the rest of my school supplies, my mother’s voice rounded the corner from the kitchen and into my ears.

“Johnny, school doesn’t begin for another week. Don’t use your crayons and pencils up before you even start,” she said.

I was so ready to go to ...

In the summer of 1977, I was finally old enough to get my first job. My first real job, that is.

I mean the kind of job where you get a paycheck, instead of a wadded up fistful of $1 bills, like Mrs. Bone always handed me after I mowed her yard. (A yard that seemed endless and was filled with magnolia trees and plants I didn’t recognize.)

The kind of job where your pay came after withholdings, which awakened me to ...

The brains of men and women couldn’t be more different. I’m sure that by pairing the two, the Good Lord above has had lots of laughs.

It really makes you wonder how the thought patterns of husbands and wives ever find common ground.

Men primarily think of red meat, Three Stooges marathons, and cars.

Women think of everything else. All the time.

I believe this is why husbands can go to sleep seconds after their heads hit the pillow, and wives lie awake for ...

As I drove to work, the first thing I noticed was the flashing yellow lights in the school zones weren’t blinking.

Official notification that summer is here.

As a kid in Ashdown, Arkansas, we didn’t have flashing yellow lights. We had one flashing light. It was red.

Located at the main intersection at Highways 71 and 32, that flashing red light was a symbol of who we were. Not every town qualified for a flashing red light, so when we stopped there, we ...