Moms used to be more versatile. If you were in the back seat of the Buick, they could discipline you from the driver’s seat and never swerve or knock the ashes off of their Marlboro Red.

My mom never smoked, so it’s possible that without a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth, she was even more effective. At barely over five feet tall, she could reach over the front seat of her Electra 225 Limited and get to my ...

In the North, dads have basements. In the South, they have shops. Both accommodate man things, including woodworking, small engine repair, and isolation from the fairer sex.

As a kid in Ashdown, Arkansas, I saw basements on TV shows and wished we had one. My dad said the water table was too high where we lived, so a basement would flood. Instead, he used our garage to do man things. And he included me.

Whether it’s a basement, garage, shed, or shop, ...

Leaving Ashdown, Arkansas, was an event unto itself. When your family has one car, going anywhere was a treat.

Especially if the destination was a long one where there were lots of people.

So, to be told you’re going to see somewhere you’ve never heard of was the equivalent of going to England. Which at even the ripe old preschool age I was, I had heard of England. The Beatles made sure of it.

When I was quite young, my parents drove us ...

In 2014, I was contacted by a newspaper in Tyler, Texas. Unbeknownst to me, the publisher of said paper had been reading a blog I’d been writing for my family. The person who called me said the owner of the paper wanted to take my blog and make it a column.

You can imagine what a family blog contains. Who’s doing what, where they’re doing it, and how it ties into the rest of the family. Much like the Christmas letters ...