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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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I had a man cave before it was called that.
For eons, men have had a space they called their own. A place to get away. This space has been called a number of different things, but the purpose was the same. When the pressures of their time reached an unacceptable level, they could escape.
One hundred years ago, when America was primarily an agrarian society, men had a barn. There, they could retreat to a day of taking care of the ...
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Man spent thousands of years in the wilderness, scrounging for food, dodging danger and searching for a safe precursor to toilet paper. After finally conquering agriculture, domesticating many animals, and inventing Charmin, Americans now spend millions each year to go back into the woods.
In movies and on TV, camping is presented as being utopia. Even medication ads for older, less functional men seem to indicate that a pill and a pup tent are all a happy couple needs.
But the truth ...
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My mom is an identical twin. My mom’s mom was also an identical twin.
There were at least two other sets of twins in my family when I was growing up; one identical, the other fraternal. So, growing up around people who looked exactly like each other seemed perfectly normal to me.
However, the rest of the world seems mesmerized by this fairly common gift from nature.
Wikipedia indicates that out of every 1,000 births in America, about 33 are twins.
The most common ...
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This week, for the first time in my life, I made my own butter.
But to get to the beginning of this tasty story, we have to go back a few years.
In 2013, I was sitting in the waiting room at my sleep doctor’s office when I became tired of the talking heads on the news network arguing with each other, so I struck up a conversation with an older gentleman and his wife. Turns out, they were also sick of ...
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Comic books were a big part of my childhood.
As a preteen, my comic books went virtually everywhere with me. I say virtually, because they frowned upon them in church. That was about the only place I didn’t take them.
My favorites were the Marvel Comics. Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Captain America, The Incredible X-Men and others, took me into a world that I loved. In my comics, the bad guys tried, but the good guys always ...
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I miss Tastee Freez and A&W Root Beer stands.
My earliest recollection of hamburgers were ground beef patties that my mom fried in a cast iron skillet and placed between two pieces of white bread that were coated in Miracle Whip.
I’m sure that the burgers were fried in bacon drippings that had been saved from breakfast, because virtually everything we ate back then was fried in bacon drippings that had been saved from breakfast.
As I got older, and my parents felt ...
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Valentine’s Day is almost here. Again.
According to history.com, approximately 150 million Valentine’s Day cards are exchanged annually, making Valentine’s Day the second most popular card-sending holiday after Christmas.
There are a number of theories as to the origin of this now-commercialized holiday, but most have to do with the birth or death of a sainted fellow named Valentine. Leave it to American commerce to turn that into an expensive show of affection.
Valentine’s Day has to be one of the most ...
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