Photo credit: Ronda Fleming Pounds

Columnist John Moore went home 40 years after high school graduation to do a book signing. He was worried no one would attend. He was wrong. Even Spiderman showed up.

Of all the buildings on my high school campus, there was only one in which I’d never entered. That was home economics.

In the 1970s, guys didn’t take home ec. We took football, track, and other manly electives. Home economics was for girls.

But on this day, nearly 40 ...

The Old Farmer’s Almanac said it was time for me to plant my potatoes and corn. But the weather forecast called for a gullywasher. That’s a fancy weather term for a lot of rain.

So I waited. And waited. And waited.

When the rain finally stopped, I was two weeks past when I should’ve had my potatoes and corn in the ground.

Now, I’m not the best at deciphering all that’s in the Farmer’s Almanac, but if I’m reading this correctly, I’m now ...

We’re losing the art of conversation and small talk.

No one else was better at both than my parents’ and grandparents’ generations.

Before cable TV, and certainly before iPads and iPhones, there was a phenomenon that is now becoming extinct – face-to-face conversations. Visiting someone for the sole purpose of talking.

Those who grew up during the depression and the Baby Boomers who followed, learned how to make conversation. My family had little money to divert ourselves to fancy activities, so conversation and ...

Photo credit: John Moore

Photo: Columnist John Moore uses the last full service gas station in the town where he lives.

Before he was Maverick or Jim Rockford, actor James Garner was a gas station attendant.

A buddy of his who was a soda jerk kept telling him that he was good looking enough to be an actor. But Garner wasn’t interested in being an actor.

That changed after he returned from his military service in Korea. He visited his former soda jerk buddy ...

Photo: The January 18, 2020 reunion at Barksdale Air Force Base of members of the Secret Squirrel Mission. Columnist John Moore’s friend, Warren Ward, is fourth from right.

There were only a handful of people in the world who knew what was about to happen. My friend was one of them.

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, a number of response options by the United States began to form in Washington, D.C.

Options that would send Saddam’s Iraqi army back from whence ...

Some people just outlive their hairstyle.

During the 60s, both my father and his next-youngest brother still wore 50s hairstyles. Especially my uncle.

I don’t know if it’s called a ‘ducktail’ or what the exact name is, but in my family, the look was hanging on. I suspect folks from the Brylcreem factory were very appreciative that, thanks to my dad and uncle, they were still employed.

The hairstyles they wore didn’t match the longer, dryer look of the other dads and uncles ...

In 2013, TV Guide ranked it number 34 on the list of the top 60 TV shows of all time.

Not bad for a program that was originally placed opposite The Flip Wilson Show and The Mod Squad on Thursday nights – two highly rated shows of the early 70s.

That’s how much faith the executives at CBS had in The Waltons, a show about a large, poor family trying to get by during the depths of the Great Depression.

I was 10 when the show debuted. And I loved ...

As I sat in Fred’s office listening to him speak, I could hear everything.

It happens that way when Fred is speaking into a sensitive microphone and you’re wearing headphones.

He was reading his new book aloud and I was recording it.

It was his first time to record a book and he trusted me to capture what he was transferring from the written word to the spoken word.

It took four days to record.

My job was to make sure that Fred didn’t miss ...

I was never any good at football. I played because my dad had been a football star in high school. All-District and All-State, he was even offered a college scholarship.

Me? I weighed 135 and was 5’9”.

Tennis was my sport. I was pretty good. I started playing around age 12 and would later make the tennis team.

But in the early and mid-70s, tennis didn’t impress a football-obsessed Southern dad. Or few others.

I quit the football team in the 10th grade and ...

(phone ringing)

Me: “Hello.”

Mom: “Did you know that your cousin Tina works at a restaurant that serves chocolate gravy?”

Me: “What? Where?”

Mom: “In Dierks. But it’s only on Saturday mornings.”

Me: “Please ask her to text me pictures. I need proof.”

I politely ended the call and then proceeded to use my phone to map out what time I’d have to leave in the middle of the night to be able to drive to Dierks, Arkansas, the following Saturday before they ran out of ...