I’ll Do It Myself

I understand that people have to make a living, but sometimes, the markup on repair services borders on ridiculous.

Case in point: I was recently walking on the treadmill, when it suddenly just stopped.

Now, I know that this is shocking, but try to get past the part about me being on a treadmill and focus on the rest of the story.

We bought a state-of-the-art treadmill from Sears back in 2002. The guy sold me this newfangled piece of exercise equipment that ...

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I Get Mail

 

When I began jotting down my thoughts each week back in 2013, I didn’t plan on what started out as a blog meant to document my life, becoming a newspaper column.

This blog also appears as a weekly column in the Tyler Morning Telegraph and The Little River News.

The first is near where I live in East Texas, and the other is in my hometown of Ashdown, Arkansas.

However, I’m glad that it did. Each newspaper was kind enough to ...

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Write on Time

Writing a book takes way more work than I ever imagined.

But now, in addition to skydiving, working on the radio, and marrying a beautiful woman, I can check, “Wrote A Book” off my bucket list.

What makes one decide to publish a book? During the last several months as I spent days, nights and weekends working on taking my first stab at this, I asked myself the same question.

My friend Steve, who writes for a living, recently made the comment that ...

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In A Class Of Our Own

Einstein’s theory of relativity includes something called “Time Dilation.”

I’m about as far from being a scientist as one can possibly be, but the way that I understand time dilation, two clocks show different times when they’re affected by gravity or velocity. A clock on earth would move faster than one in orbit. The faster you go, the slower time moves.

Supposedly, this theory has been proven through multiple tests, but my own test also bears out his results.

As evidence, I present ...

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Unattended Husbands

Since my wife retired, she does what many retirees do. Whatever she wants.

Like many families, our children and other family members are scattered across the country like dice across a table. Consequently, some of her time is spent flying or driving for visits in Texas, Oklahoma, Virginia, and other destinations.

But, being gone from home requires the one thing that most wives dread. Leaving their husbands unattended. For whatever reason, women think that men are completely incapable of handling a few ...

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Go Johnny Go

I had no idea how much one man had impacted my life until Chuck Berry died recently at age 90.

When I was 8 years old, I knew that I wanted to play Rock and Roll music. What I didn’t know was that Chuck almost single handedly gave Rock and Roll the roots of its sound and paved the road to success for all rock acts who would follow, including The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.

I remember walking into Mike Hubrel’s ...

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Where The Heck Is Tyler, Texas?

“Where the heck is Tyler, Texas?”

My question didn’t surprise the guy on the other end of the line, and he chuckled.

It was early 1987. I was a 24-year-old disc jockey with a young family, and the job I had at the time just wasn’t working out. Shockingly, six months into the gig, the manager at the station reneged on my compensation package and cut my salary.

If you aren’t familiar with the radio business, being lied to and underpaid are hallmarks ...

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We Interupt This Program…

Suddenly, the TV show we were watching just stopped. We could get the cable channels, but the wifi stopped working.

This meant no Netflix, YouTube or Amazon Prime.

This moment made it clear to me how much the Internet is quickly becoming the main information conduit through which we receive our information and entertainment.

We had to wait a day before a tech could come to the house. As he tested the equipment, checked the box outside and made phone calls, I thought ...

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Random Road Debris

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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Let’s Stop The Arguing

No one is wrong anymore.

Over the past 10 years or so, arguing has become America’s favorite pastime. Whether it’s politics, religion, sexual orientation, education, health care, or any number of other topics, people now wallow in bickering.

They do it on TV, Facebook, in online chat rooms, even in the waiting room at the oil change place. I witnessed the last one myself.

I can’t be the only one who’s sick of all the arguing.

If someone disagrees with someone else, they each ...

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