Recently, I saw something I haven’t seen in many years. A young man driving a car he was fixing up.

It was an older Mustang. By older I mean a 90’s model.

The car had spots of primer, there were a few dents, and the exhaust system appeared to be loose.

But this young man was driving with the top down, smiling as he went.

It took me back 50 years.

My first car was a Mustang. A 1966 model; white with red interior. The ...

When I was a kid, I had to sneak around if I wanted to eat certain things.

Now that I’m an adult and in charge, I still have to sneak around if I want to eat certain things.

I miss the days when no one knew anything about gluten, trans fats, cholesterol, carbohydrates, or anything else that prevented us from enjoying our food.

Every day for breakfast, my grandparents’ generation ate biscuits and gravy, bacon, sausage, eggs, butter and jelly.

They washed it down ...

When this newspaper column began in 2014, my wife asked me a question.

Wife: “How long do you intend to write this?”

Me: “Oh, I don’t know. I guess I’ll write 500 of them and then hang it up.

This is number 500.

Isn’t it funny how you wind up where you are? You do what you do when most of the time you never intended to be doing it in the first place?

That’s the case for me.

My first connection to print media was ...

Kids do stupid things. I have the mark to prove it.

In 1972, I was sitting in class at CD Franks Elementary in Ashdown, Arkansas, when I did or said something that riled Sonja Yates. I don’t recall what I did or said, but it must’ve been provocative.

Her response was to bury the end of her pencil in my elbow.

The mark, over a half-century later, is still there.

When I mentioned to a group of folks that I had a pencil mark ...

There were things my dad wanted that I was able to help him get.

Including autographs from Carl Perkins and James Doohan (Scotty from Star Trek), tickets to see Lewis Grizzard, and a golf cart.

But one thing he really wanted that I couldn’t get for him was information on who he was. Who we are.

Our ancestry.

Before he passed, I purchased memberships for him and my mother with one of the online DNA companies.

My mom’s side of the family paid in dividends, ...