Photo from the Facebook group: Memories of Crystal Springs Beach Maud Texas / Todd Prather. Date of photo is unknown.

In the summer, all of the kids went swimming.

We didn’t have video games or movies on demand. We had a bathing suit, a designated towel, a supervising adult, and a destination.

For those of us who grew up in southwest Arkansas, northeast Texas or northwest Louisiana, that 1970s destination was often Crystal Springs Beach.

Crystal Springs, as most of us called it, was a large lake located on Highway 67 near Maud, Texas. For decades, ...

It seemed at the time that my senior year in high school was busy – and tumultuous.

That’s because it was.

When some of my fellow 1980 classmates and I began working on plans to get together for the 40th anniversary of our graduation, memories came flooding in. Memories that had been filed away.

I pulled a stack from the grey matter file cabinet, blew off the dust, and poured over a few.

The year 1980 was the first year in my life that ...

The great thing about growing a lot of your own food is the ability to walk out the back door and pick it.

It doesn’t get much fresher than that.

If there’s a downside to growing a garden (we had seven garden areas this year), it’s that it seems that most of the produce comes off the vine about the same time.

So, you have a few choices.

1)   Eat a lot as fast as you can.

2)   Share with your neighbors.

3)   Share with your ...

When I was a kid, things didn’t break as often as they do now. If you bought something at Sears Lawn and Garden, you needed to run over it with an 18-wheeler to render it nonfunctional.

(Insert the sound of Tim Allen here)

Such used to be the case with lawn sprinklers. Made of steel or cast iron, the lawn sprinklers of the 50s and 60s were solid for watering your yard, and for making you dance when you stepped on one ...

In the South, the only thing you can say that’s considered bigger fightin’ words than, “Why didn’t you put beans in your chili?” is to speak ill of dry rub on ribs.

First, let me say that I don’t fall on either side of the chili or rib fences. I can consume chili with beans just as easily as I can devour St. Louis ribs with dry rub or a rack that’s been basted.

There are plenty of other things worth fighting ...

I’ve always worked at least two, sometimes three jobs. My dad said it built character. Maybe so, but what I noticed was that it built my bank account.

In 1972 when I was 11, I began mowing yards, raking leaves, or doing anything else that paid. There were plenty of elderly folks in my hometown who were no longer able to do this type of work, and I was only too glad to help them.

That same year a man in my ...