My great grandparents lived on a homestead. They cooked on a woodstove.

Most of us today have no idea how good we have it.

For my great grandparents’ generation, remodeling the kitchen meant picking a different place to stack the wood for the stove.

When I was growing up in Ashdown, Arkansas, we didn’t have air conditioning or a telephone, but we did have a step up from a woodstove. Mom had a 1950s range and oven.

I’m not sure if the gas stove ...

Commercials used to be great. They used to be an art form. They used to be fun. Today’s advertising is boring in comparison.

Television commercials were something to which I looked forward when I was a kid. Some were better developed and more interesting than the shows they sponsored.

Each advertisement succeeded by identifying a problem and offering a solution.

There were a few misters: Mr. Clean. Mr. Whipple. Mr. Bubble. And Mr. Peanut.

Mr. Clean would show up in someone’s home and highlight ...

It’s true that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. And my family liked to go treasure hunting. Often.

You don’t realize how great it is to be a kid in a family that goes to garage sales, estate sales, flea markets, and auctions, until you spend the weekend with a buddy whose family doesn’t do those things.

Regular families are more like my buddy’s. I’m glad my family wasn’t regular.

By the age of 12, I bet that I knew about as ...

We often hear someone say they just want to leave the world a better place than they found it. That’s a great goal, but rarely is it the case.

Unless you were Charles Kuralt.

For those of us who grew up during his time on the CBS News segment, On The Road, we had a frequent reminder that all news wasn’t bad. For a country boy in Arkansas, it was a pretty good feeling to see Kuralt do a segment on an ...