The first time I saw a VCR was in 1979. A buddy of mine got it from a friend who bought things he couldn’t afford.

Many of my most prized acquisitions came through similar channels – people who overbought and then sold to me at a great discount – but that’s for another column.

There was something magical about being able to record something right off of the TV antenna and watch it again. And again, if you wanted. But at first, ...

I have no clue why we’re told to say, “cheese” when preparing to have our photos taken. I do know that I often said cheese when asked as a kid what I wanted to eat.

Specifically, cheese toast.

That was my go-to quick meal growing up in Ashdown, Arkansas. I wasn’t allowed to eat it every day, but I ate it as often as my mom would make it for my sister and me.

Cheese toast was one of the simple, yet hearty ...

Once upon a time, kids used to get bored. Before cell phones, video games, and 4,000 cable channels with nothing to watch, there wasn’t much to do. And kids got bored.

I was one of them.

It was bad enough to have a deep, endless chasm of time swallowing you (think Christmas holidays or summers before you were old enough to work a job), but it was even worse when you were with cousins and other family or friends, and all of ...

My mother must’ve kept everything my sister and I ever made for Christmas. Some things were put together in school, but most were done in Sunday School.

Same is true for anything we ever made, regardless of the time of year.

Decades later at a Christmas gathering, if something someone says reminds my mom of a drawing I did in Vacation Bible School in 1967, she leaves the room and moments later returns with said drawing for all to see.

I never understood ...