Bruce Willis ad libbed a line in Die Hard that struck a chord with me.

No, not the “Yipee Ki-Yay,” line. I think that was actually in the script.

It was the, “Come out to the coast. We’ll get together. Have some laughs,” quote. Willis made that line up. It seems to be the personification of me trying to take vacations.

Traveling has always been one big calamity for me. Even when I was a kid.

For six months prior to when my parents ...

Pink flamingos. Chalk and concrete figures. Cast iron pots with flowers. Old school bells. Cars on blocks.

The yard art of yesterday.

I’ve always felt that Southerners were so proud to have a yard with grass in it that we set things out to keep the grass from being stolen.

Many of us grew up in very rural surroundings, such that the yards weren’t cut by lawn mowers, they were cut by billy goats.

Also, Southern women do not possess the ability to have ...

Christmas 1973 had a focus. All I wanted was the new Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle set.

The short sidewalk in front of our little red brick house on Beech Street was the perfect length to launch and then watch my hero ride off the end of the concrete and into the soft grass.

I’d seen Evel’s unsuccessful jumps and had determined that if he’d had softer places to slide into after descending the ramp, he wouldn’t have broken all of those bones.

That ...

Rainy days in the 1960s started with both of the captains. Captain Kangaroo and Cap’n Crunch.

A bowl of Cap’n Crunch, placed strategically on the corner of my parents’ Formica dinette table allowed me to shovel those tasty, compact cubes of processed grains and sugar into myself. All while watching Mr. Moose drop ping pong balls onto the captain’s head.

Every weekday in the little red brick house on Beech Street in Ashdown, Arkansas, started with the Cap’n and Captain, but the ...

They call it, “click bait.”

It’s when you come across something online that sounds amazing, so you click on it to learn more.

Click bait is something that turns out to be nothing as good as it sounded. Bait and switch. You think you’re get something that you’re not.

But in this case, what I thought was click bait turned out to be a good catch. Actually, a great catch.

Pencils.

I love pencils. Love is a light word. If I wrote out the word ...

There’s strong evidence to back up the repeated scientific claim that our sense of smell is the one with the best connection to our memories.

That strong evidence is my own light switch that flips on whenever I smell fresh-baked biscuits. A light switch that turns on the decades-old bulb so that I can see my mother pulling a sheet pan of that breakfast bread from the old gas oven. It was a small stove that was in the kitchen of ...

Social media, for all of its faults, every now and then offers something worthwhile.

I’m a member of a group on Facebook called, “Dull Men.” The only pre qualification to join this throng of staid fellas is to publicly admit you are dull. And you do that by joining.

Often, one of the guys will post a picture of something he either can’t identify or doesn’t understand.

It’s the perfect venue for this sort of thing. Men love nothing better than telling ...

On a recent trip, I remembered why I like to stay home.

Coffee.

After throwing back the covers from my rented room, I searched for the device that brews that sweet, morning nectar.

Behind a door, next to the $10 mini-bottles of booze, and the $5 bottles of water, sat the coffee maker.

It was so complicated; I put the water where the coffee pods go. After cleaning up the mess, and being willing to risk electrocuting myself for a cup, I was finally ...

The 8-track tape case that lived on the back seat of my 1972 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme was always full. Full to the point that I had to rotate different cartridges in and out to be able to listen to the variety my buddy’s and my teenage brain required.

“What exactly is a Doobie Brother?” my dad asked once.

“I have no idea,” I answered. Which was a lie. However, admitting that I knew what that was would’ve been instantly incriminating.

Our house on ...