When I was a kid growing up in Ashdown, Arkansas, we picked up three channels. ABC, CBS, and NBC. PBS existed somewhere else near big cities. We’d heard of it, but didn’t pick it up off the antenna that was attached to the side of our house. This was the same antenna I was sent out to turn whenever the signal waned.

So, like most others growing up in 1960s America, kids dined on a steady TV diet of Hollywood’s version ...

The things people use on a daily basis mostly go unnoticed. A watch, knife, or Bible typically doesn’t have a lot of actual value. That is until the person who owned them is gone.

Then the item goes from being a tool to becoming a treasure.

Some of my most valued possessions wouldn’t bring much on the open market. But to me, they are priceless.

When they were given to me, I was grateful, but not appreciative.

I am now.

Growing up in Ashdown, Arkansas, ...

Buying a loaf of sliced bread is something we all take for granted these days, but it has been available commercially for less than 100 years. It was first sold in 1928.

By the 1960s, sliced bread was how most kids in America survived. Not wheat bread or whole grain bread. I’m talking about light bread.

Now, people in different parts of the country call it different things, but in Ashdown, Arkansas, everyone called it, ‘light bread.’

If you’re unsure of what I’m ...

Whoever designed the string-pull on a bag of charcoal needs to know they failed.

And it isn’t just bags of charcoal. It’s also large bags of kitty litter and pet food. You pull the string and it either snaps off in your hand or removes one of your fingers, but it never ever pulls evenly and removes the paper to let you get at what you’re after.

Let me put it this way. If this design were also used to try and ...

Driving my new 1972 Oldsmobile Cutlass, I steered its long front end into the carpet and tile store.

Actually, the Olds wasn’t new, but it was new to me. The person I was about to meet was also new to me. His name was Dennis.

He worked full time as an Ashdown, Arkansas, city cop. The carpet store was a part-time gig. At least then it was part-time.

I also worked multiple jobs. Disc jockey, grocery store employee, and photographer. On this day ...

Potatoes.

That’s what mom said got us through the hard times. Potatoes.

I honestly never knew we had hard times, but if she said we did, we did. And during those financial bumps in the road, we ate potatoes. Lots of them.

Like many families, my parents had a garden. I always thought they grew okra, tomatoes, and other itchy vegetation to make my life miserable. But the potatoes I never minded.

That’s because potatoes are the most versatile food on Mother Earth. The ...

It’s hard to beat pie. You can go to any fancy restaurant and order a $20 item from the dessert menu, but it won’t be as good as a slice of my momma’s chocolate pie. Or pie made by any respectable lady who grew up in the South – which is anywhere below Little Rock.

There’s magic that happens in the kitchen when grandmas pass on their secrets of how to make pie, cobbler, and pudding.

Southern women learn early in life ...

At Shur-Way, my parents always carried a ticket. Shur-Way was our local grocery store in Ashdown, Arkansas. On the front of the building, it proudly said, “Our Meats Are Better.”

This was a widely-known truth.

My dad always said they had the finest center-cut baloney you could buy.

The package always said, “bologna,” but baloney was what we all called it. Baloney was also the best term for lots of things my dad would say.

The Popes owned Shur-Way. The whole family ran the ...

My grandfather was driving us back from Broken Bow. It was late on a Saturday night. At least it was late for me. My bedtime was usually 8 o’clock. It was at least 8:30, and I was tired.

My grandfather was a blacksmith. He went to Oklahoma each Saturday for an auction a woman named Barbara held. It was unusual for a woman to be running a business at that time. It was also unusual that someone was still a blacksmith.

Blacksmith ...