Kids do stupid things. I have the mark to prove it.

In 1972, I was sitting in class at CD Franks Elementary in Ashdown, Arkansas, when I did or said something that riled Sonja Yates. I don’t recall what I did or said, but it must’ve been provocative.

Her response was to bury the end of her pencil in my elbow.

The mark, over a half-century later, is still there.

When I mentioned to a group of folks that I had a pencil mark ...

There were things my dad wanted that I was able to help him get.

Including autographs from Carl Perkins and James Doohan (Scotty from Star Trek), tickets to see Lewis Grizzard, and a golf cart.

But one thing he really wanted that I couldn’t get for him was information on who he was. Who we are.

Our ancestry.

Before he passed, I purchased memberships for him and my mother with one of the online DNA companies.

My mom’s side of the family paid in dividends, ...

Men have man caves because they want the room they had as a kid back.

They also spend the rest of their days trying to find the recipes of their favorite childhood dishes.

The ones like their mom used to make.

Just about everyone’s mom in Ashdown, Arkansas, had a recipe for pot roast. Some tasted close to the same, regardless of which buddy invited you over.

But others were completely unique and amazing. My mom’s was one of them.

Before automatic timers, ovens that ...

He was crossing the road. Over and over. I was surprised someone hadn’t hit him with their car. I was also surprised the coyotes hadn’t gotten him.

It was 9 o’clock at night and according to the residents of the small strip of country road, he’d been out there for a couple of hours. Someone had dumped him before dark.

I spent 45 minutes, in the dark, trying to catch him. But my repeated calls to him fell on deaf ears. Literally.

Turned ...

It appears that telephone landlines may be on their way out.

CNN Business reported that recently, AT&T applied for a waiver in the state of California to stop servicing traditional landlines. Both AT&T and Verizon have both said they want to move away from landlines, but this latest move makes it real.

Until I was in third grade, my household didn’t even have a phone. When we got one, it hung on the kitchen wall and was only for adults, emergencies, or ...

On Christmas Eve 2008, there were just three of us working in the office.

Well, technically, there was one of us working, the other two were there. A couple of the young ladies on staff either didn’t have enough vacation time built up or they were saving it for another day. Either way, the three of us were in the office the day before Christmas.

These two ladies had tried repeatedly to get me to join up on this new thing called, ...

My great grandparents lived on a homestead. They cooked on a woodstove.

Most of us today have no idea how good we have it.

For my great grandparents’ generation, remodeling the kitchen meant picking a different place to stack the wood for the stove.

When I was growing up in Ashdown, Arkansas, we didn’t have air conditioning or a telephone, but we did have a step up from a woodstove. Mom had a 1950s range and oven.

I’m not sure if the gas stove ...

Commercials used to be great. They used to be an art form. They used to be fun. Today’s advertising is boring in comparison.

Television commercials were something to which I looked forward when I was a kid. Some were better developed and more interesting than the shows they sponsored.

Each advertisement succeeded by identifying a problem and offering a solution.

There were a few misters: Mr. Clean. Mr. Whipple. Mr. Bubble. And Mr. Peanut.

Mr. Clean would show up in someone’s home and highlight ...

It’s true that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. And my family liked to go treasure hunting. Often.

You don’t realize how great it is to be a kid in a family that goes to garage sales, estate sales, flea markets, and auctions, until you spend the weekend with a buddy whose family doesn’t do those things.

Regular families are more like my buddy’s. I’m glad my family wasn’t regular.

By the age of 12, I bet that I knew about as ...

We often hear someone say they just want to leave the world a better place than they found it. That’s a great goal, but rarely is it the case.

Unless you were Charles Kuralt.

For those of us who grew up during his time on the CBS News segment, On The Road, we had a frequent reminder that all news wasn’t bad. For a country boy in Arkansas, it was a pretty good feeling to see Kuralt do a segment on an ...