At 11:25 a.m. with the ring of a bell, the entire high school student body divided itself into three distinct groups. Those who brought their lunch, those who left campus, and those who ate in the cafeteria.

At least, this was the information I received as a junior high student.

The most intriguing group to me was the pack of young adults I’d heard about who allegedly roamed the town freely, grazing at every restaurant in town.

I’d also heard that the kids ...

There wasn’t much else that was worse than being assigned to sort the bottle room in back of the Piggly Wiggly. If someone could fit an object in an empty Coke bottle, they’d put it in there.

I called them all Coke bottles, whether they were a Coke product or not. Pepsi, 7up, Dr. Pepper, Grapette – they were all Coke bottles to me and they were all worth money. When I left my career in the grocery business Coke bottles ...

I can still smell the aroma of the freshly opened box of crayons and two sharpened Husky pencils. The distinctive scent of Crayola Crayons and shaved wood just smelled like the beginning of education.

Noisily rifling through the rest of my school supplies, my mother’s voice rounded the corner from the kitchen and into my ears.

“Johnny, school doesn’t begin for another week. Don’t use your crayons and pencils up before you even start,” she said.

I was so ready to go to ...

In the summer of 1977, I was finally old enough to get my first job. My first real job, that is.

I mean the kind of job where you get a paycheck, instead of a wadded up fistful of $1 bills, like Mrs. Bone always handed me after I mowed her yard. (A yard that seemed endless and was filled with magnolia trees and plants I didn’t recognize.)

The kind of job where your pay came after withholdings, which awakened me to ...

The brains of men and women couldn’t be more different. I’m sure that by pairing the two, the Good Lord above has had lots of laughs.

It really makes you wonder how the thought patterns of husbands and wives ever find common ground.

Men primarily think of red meat, Three Stooges marathons, and cars.

Women think of everything else. All the time.

I believe this is why husbands can go to sleep seconds after their heads hit the pillow, and wives lie awake for ...

As I drove to work, the first thing I noticed was the flashing yellow lights in the school zones weren’t blinking.

Official notification that summer is here.

As a kid in Ashdown, Arkansas, we didn’t have flashing yellow lights. We had one flashing light. It was red.

Located at the main intersection at Highways 71 and 32, that flashing red light was a symbol of who we were. Not every town qualified for a flashing red light, so when we stopped there, we ...

Remember when you’d visit family and they’d pull out the slide projector for the three-hour presentation of their trip to Carlsbad Caverns and Dodge City?

Now, I loved family vacations as much as the next kid. But, they were our family vacations, not someone else’s. And the vacations that included a three-hour presentation of your kinfolk donning swimsuits, tank tops, and tennis shoes, while smiling and standing in front of some tourist trap in New Mexico, was not how ...

There are two culinary camps. Those who believe in spicy, and those who don’t.

This message is for those who don’t. I was taught long ago that preaching to the choir isn’t the best use of an argument. So, this message is for the ‘never-peppers’ crowd.

Other than ice cream, there isn’t much that I don’t put jalapeños on. I know that I just ended a sentence in a preposition, but good, spicy food will cause that.

I grew up in a home ...

What has happened to this great country? We once held high standards for ourselves. But no more.

I opened our refrigerator and what do I see?

Fake cheese. Actually, fake, fake cheese.

On the package, I read: “Imitation Process Cheese Food.”

What?

Does this mean the process of the cheese food is fake, or processed cheese food is imitation and there’s a real version somewhere else for purchase?

Stay with me here.

On top of that, the package says it’s, “American Flavor.”

What exactly is American flavor? Honestly, ...

Planes used to be a means of travel for the rich. You’d see people in the movies or on TV flying first-class with five-course meals, champagne, cloth napkins, cocktails, and a nice restroom at the back of the plane.

Regular folks traveled by Buick with cans of Vienna Sausages, saltine crackers, and a tree off a state highway somewhere on the way to Carlsbad Caverns.

If we (the regular folks) were lucky, the car had air conditioning. Working air conditioning.

I’ve always had ...