Some days are just lucky ones. Such was the day I found a half-century old console stereo at an estate sale.

It isn’t exactly like the one my parents had, but it’s sure close.

Today, people stick in an earbud and listen to an endless supply of music on their phone via the Internet. But not so long ago we listened to one artist at a time on the family console stereo.

I start a new job soon and I was thinking about ...

This space is usually relegated to discussions centered on fried baloney sandwiches, classic TV shows, and the like. But today, I’m venturing into Dear Abby territory.

With apologies to Abby, Heloise, and Anne Landers, here we go.

No one actually wrote me for advice, but let’s pretend they did:

Dear John,

My Toyota Sasquatch isn’t very fuel efficient. My budget no longer allows for driving and buying food. What should I do?

Signed,

Hungry in Houston

Dear Hungry,

Have you tried hypermiling? It’s a trick you can do ...

Spring had arrived, but the heat and humidity had not. It was glorious.

If I’d had a convertible, I would have had the top down. But I didn’t. So I did the closest thing I could. I rolled the windows down before putting on my sunglasses.

The shifter was in the console. I engaged the transmission to drive and pulled onto the highway from my parents’ home. I drove to my job at the radio station.

Radio was king. To work in the ...

When I was a kid growing up in Ashdown, Arkansas, we picked up three channels. ABC, CBS, and NBC. PBS existed somewhere else near big cities. We’d heard of it, but didn’t pick it up off the antenna that was attached to the side of our house. This was the same antenna I was sent out to turn whenever the signal waned.

So, like most others growing up in 1960s America, kids dined on a steady TV diet of Hollywood’s version ...