If you look at what’s missing from this great land, it’s a barstool on which to sit, good home cookin’, and a counter on which to eat it.

The diners of yesterday need a revival.

It wasn’t just the amazing food; it also was the coffee that was served in cheap mugs by the waitresses who could juggle more things than a Ringling Brothers employee.

It was the truck drivers interacting with the locals. The locals were regaled by stories of the road seen from ...

When I was a kid in Ashdown, Arkansas, I was surrounded by old people. It wasn’t so much that all of the other folks were actually old it’s just that when you’re a kid, everyone besides you seems old.

Not only did they seem old, they acted old. They ate old. They watched old. They drove old. They wore their hair old. They smelled old.

I’ll clarify that last one momentarily.

When you’re young, you have unlimited energy. I’m reminded of this every ...

We called it light bread. Others called it white bread. Regardless of what it was called, in my hometown of Ashdown, Arkansas and most of the rest of the South it was the foundation of the Southern food pyramid.

And it was found aplenty at our home on Beech Street. You never knew when company might come.

Over the years, I slowly fell away from light bread. I was encouraged to eat wheat and other “healthy” breads by well-intentioned doctors and wives.

But ...