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 ...

My father used to talk about radio programs a lot. The Lone Ranger. Lum and Abner. Amos and Andy. Edgar Bergen. People tend to talk about things they like. And he liked the old radio shows. He said he would have kept listening to them, but they took them away from him.

As radio gave way to television, those shows either faded away or found a new home in the visual medium.

A handful of radio programs were still on the air ...

I hate pine needles.

Growing up in Arkansas will do that to you.

Pine trees are everywhere in Ashdown, Arkansas. They are pretty much everywhere throughout the Natural State.

Pine trees brought the paper mills, which brought the paper mill employees, which brought more homes, which brought more homeowners who didn’t want to rake up their own pine needles.

This was an opportunity for my buddies and me.

A yard full of pine needles prevented the grass from growing in the spring. And when you’re ...

There’s something about being scared. Some kids claim they don’t like it, but do. While a handful of other kids claim they don’t like it, and really don’t. I was the former. My sister was the latter.

In the small, redbrick house on Beech Street in Ashdown, Arkansas, the two of us knew that Halloween was on its way when three things happened. The decorations went up, our mom took us costume shopping at the Ben Franklin, and The Ghost and ...

You’d think that John Wayne said the word ‘pilgrim’ a lot. He did. But only in one movie.

In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the Duke said it 25 times. The Internet Movie Database (IMDB) counted.

Every celebrity impersonator since Rich Little used the word pilgrim whenever they were imitating John Wayne. That made me think what you likely thought. That Wayne said the word a lot.

When I was a kid, I thought calling someone a pilgrim referred to that group ...

Peter Marshall: “Why do Hells Angels wear leather?”

Paul Lynde: “Because chiffon wrinkles too easily.”

If someone says, “Center square,” and you know what they mean, you grew up at one of the best times in TV history.

I’m talking about game shows, and specifically about Paul Lynde and The Hollywood Squares.

The Internet, for all of its bad facets, also offers some really great things. One stellar offering is the ability to travel back in time to when game shows ruled the daytime ...

As we left Ashdown, Arkansas, in my mom’s 1971 Buick Electra 225 Limited, my mom turned to my dad and asked, “Jimmy, are you sure we have enough money?”

He responded, “Well, Mary. If four hundred dollars isn’t enough to spend two weeks at Disney World, then we might as well stay home.”

It was 1973. That four hundred was to cover gas, hotels, meals, tickets to a relatively new Disney World, souvenirs, and incidentals. And it did. With some left over.

My ...