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 ...

Most of us can cite a handful of times when we knew that we were witnessing history.

Something unique. Something profound. A shift in the tectonic plates of society.

So it was on January 20, 2025.

There was a drawing for tickets to attend the presidential inauguration. I entered. I won.

No longer can I say that I never win anything. A few months prior I won a raffle at church. Then came the email telling me that I needed to make plans to ...

I never had more than one at a time, but I had stuffed animals. Don’t all kids have a security blanket when they’re young?

At first, I had a monkey who had a banana in one hand that fit in his mouth. His name was Mr. Bim Zip Zippy. He was my best buddy.

But then Harvey came along.

Nights couldn’t have happened if Harvey hadn’t been with me. Harvey was my stuffed rabbit. Named after Jimmy Stewart’s imaginary movie friend, Harvey was ...

I noticed his Watch immediately. I usually notice watches immediately.

But his was especially noticeable. It was a Rolex. I don’t own a Rolex, but one day I plan to. A nice one like his.

That’s the thing about watches. They all used to be nice before the cheap ones flooded the market.

One of the first nice things my dad gave me when I was in grade school in Ashdown, Arkansas, was a watch. It was a pocket watch made by Westclox, ...

If you were raised by anyone who went through the Depression in the South, there are things you never throw away. Whether you’ll ever need them or not.

My grandparents often talked about the Great Depression. It was a time, as they put it, “When everyone had nothing.”

Since neither side of my family had much before the Depression, it would seem that the worst economic downturn in American history made things worse.

My mom’s parents lived in a small area between Fomby ...

When Wal Mart grew, warnings that it would put the mom and pop businesses under seemed to come true. Now, online businesses seem to bring the same threat to Wal Mart.

But one store that seems to be hanging on, at least in the smaller towns, is the local hardware store.

When I was moving my mom from Arkansas to Texas, I had to make numerous trips to the local hardware store in Ashdown, Arkansas. When I needed ratchet straps, tape, and ...

There’s always that one house in town you dream of fixing up. Whenever you see it, you think, “Someone should bring that place back. Restore it to its former glory. Then move in and have a big get together.”

You dream of it being you.

For me, that house was built in 1910 at the corner of Willow and Joyner in my hometown of Ashdown, Arkansas. The two-story frame home has a wraparound porch and a dome with a spire. One of ...

In the movie The Big Chill, a group of old friends gather for the funeral of one of their own, and it turns into a reunion.

Recently, a group of my old friends gathered for a reunion, and it turned into a gathering for a funeral.

I got the call on the way to the reunion venue. My best friend since seventh grade was on the other end of the line.

“My wife just died,” he said.

You hear bad news, but you don’t ...

The Beatles had a song called, Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. The line, “…It was 20 years ago today…” reminded me of something that happened not 20 years ago, but 50 years ago. My father dragging me outside to put a storage building together.

It was Thanksgiving Day 1974. Dad had bought a storage building kit from Sears and had it delivered. He’d had a concrete slab poured next to our driveway on Locust Street in Ashdown, Arkansas. The spot ...