I have become enamored with survival shows on TV.
Honestly, this isn’t a recent thing, it started about 10 years ago with a program called Survivorman, starring a man named Les Stroud. The premise is to take Les and drop him off in the most inhospitable place possible, with no food or water, few supplies, and a give him a week to not die.
It’s quite like going to the mall with your wife.
Mr. Stroud was the first of his kind to ...
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“That one was given to a man when he retired from the Illinois Railroad in 1891,” said the man. He looked as if someone had opened a time continuum and he’d just left 1891. He wore jeans, suspenders, and a real cowboy hat.
Thin, with longest white beard I’d seen in awhile, I thought how easy it would be for him to take the stage with ZZ Top and no one would be the wiser.
“How much?” I asked.
“I’d have to have ...
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There was almost no breeze. Record temperatures were being shattered in England, and the Southern US was also pretty darn hot.
But three teenage kids in Arkansas decided that it would be a great idea to live in my backyard for most of the summer of 1976.
My cousin Randy was up from Alvin, Texas. I honestly can’t remember why he stayed with us for so many weeks, but I do remember that my mom quickly reached the end of her rope ...
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Before Wal Mart and its supercenters, there were corner stores. A typical corner store was locally owned, small, sparsely stocked with kitchen and other household essentials, sometimes selling gasoline, and was located near or in the middle of a neighborhood.
In my hometown, we had Puckett’s Store and Withem’s Store.
Both were located on Highway 32, with the former on the edge of town and the latter closer to the center.
My family traded primarily with Mr. Withem. Hindsight, that choice had a ...
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During a recent discussion with coworkers, someone asked me what was typically served every Sunday after church when I was a kid.
Of course, I said pot roast.
Pot roasts migrated from the oven to the Crock-Pot during my childhood. The Crock-Pot was and still is the perfect cooking appliance for a pot roast. It was also the original set-it-and-forget-it appliance.
Moms would get up in the morning and sear the roast in a cast iron skillet, then toss it ...
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My grandfather’s shop seemed cavernous. Every room was filled with tools that a man with a strong back could use to make a living and feed his family.
My grandfather was a blacksmith. His name was Parmer.
He was a product of the Great Depression. Born in 1918, he arrived at adulthood in the midst of the worst economic period in American history. But, like many men and women of that era, he was raised in a family that survived not on ...
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I first noticed her when she was standing about fourth in line.
I was working in the radio business at the time, and the Dallas Cowboys were headed to the Super Bowl. That should give you an idea of how long ago this story takes place.
The radio station was giving away a trip for two to the game, all expenses paid. We went to different advertiser’s locations and set up registration booths for the drawing. She was trying to win the ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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