My wife and I love to buy old cookbooks. I find most of them at estate sales.
The families who are selling them are indifferent and I’m sure they have never looked for or seen the notes that their mom, grandmother, or great grandmother, scribbled in the margins.
So, for 25¢ or 50¢, I take home the guidebook for so many of their memorable family meals.
But, some of the best recipes are not found in a cookbook. They were found in ...
Continue Reading →
As I plugged the Stratocaster into my Fender amp, the buzz of the quarter inch plug made contact with the amp’s input and let me know that the amp was ready when I was.
We live at the end of a dead end road in the middle of nowhere.
The location was strategic. It was a request I’d made years ago. I’d always wanted to live as far away from town as possible. Town was where the jobs were, but when I ...
Continue Reading →
How someone can lose a shoe and not notice is beyond me. But, it isn’t uncommon for me to see one shoe in the middle of the road.
The lone shoe is just part of a much bigger phenomenon that I call random road debris.
Random road debris is anything that you spot in, on the edge of, or near a road that doesn’t belong there.
Stripes in the middle of the road belong there. A striped tennis shoe in the middle of ...
Continue Reading →
No one is wrong anymore.
Over the past 10 years or so, arguing has become America’s favorite pastime. Whether it’s politics, religion, sexual orientation, education, health care, or any number of other topics, people now wallow in bickering.
They do it on TV, Facebook, in online chat rooms, even in the waiting room at the oil change place. I witnessed the last one myself.
I can’t be the only one who’s sick of all the arguing.
If someone disagrees with someone else, they each ...
Continue Reading →
As a kid, I hated the vegetable garden. If you stood on our back porch, it was to your left. It took up the entire corner of our large yard.
To me, gardens were work and nothing more. From planting, to weeding, to harvesting, to canning, it was a waste of valuable play time. It also took away the area of the yard that the neighborhood kids and I liked using for a baseball diamond.
I would watch television and see advertisements ...
Continue Reading →
Watches are going the way of the buggy whip.
Many people, especially younger folks, are opting out of wearing a wristwatch. It seems that the same thing that made the Kodak camera, the video camera, the calculator, and many other once commonplace items, has also made the watch obsolete. The smartphone.
As if people needed another reason to stare at their cellphone, the iPhone is also now a timepiece for many.
Long before batteries powered watches, you had to wind your watch each ...
Continue Reading →
There should be a marriage manual.
When a man asks a woman to marry him, the woman gets a wedding shower. The man gets a bachelor party.
Women are practical. They give the bride-to-be kitchen towels, a Crockpot, frying pan, bedding, dishes, cookware, an iron, and silverware.
The groom’s buddies give him a hangover.
What they should give the guy is an instruction booklet.
The marriage instruction booklet should be written by really old men who have been married at least 50 years.
If you are ...
Continue Reading →
Southerners have our own language.
I’m not referring to our accent, although a Southern accent will get you free beer in a Yankee bar because they like hearing us talk.
No, I’m referring to how we describe things and get our points across.
Down South, we all get a Coke. But we don’t all get the same brand. A Coke is what you call a soda pop. If someone says they want a Coke, you ask them what kind. They may want a ...
Continue Reading →
I was an American Picker before it had a name.
I grew up in a family full of pickers. We just didn’t call it that. We called it garage sailing.
The TV show American Pickers features a couple of guys from Iowa who travel the country buying old items for resale.
In the 60s and 70s, my family bought old items, but many times we bought them to use.
My dad’s father was a blacksmith, as was his dad before him. Part of running ...
Continue Reading →
We had done the math, and without a doubt, Todd and I were going to flunk 11th grade chemistry.
It was 1978 and as my buddy and I sat in the back of Mr. Smith’s room, we knew that we would run out of school year before we had any chance of making a passing grade.
We were desperate.
As class was dismissed, we waited until all of the other students left the room.
“Mr. Smith?” I said. “Can we talk to you for ...
Continue Reading →