You learn things when you grow up in a small town. Things you don’t learn if you grow up anywhere else. Things that are special.

I was born in a small town. But I didn’t stay. I left for the same reasons other folks leave their hometown. Education, better jobs, and the perception of more fun.

You don’t think about what you give up when you leave a small town. Things that cost nothing, but are worth a lot.

Ashdown, Arkansas, was like ...

It didn’t snow much in Ashdown, Arkansas in the 1960s. It doesn’t snow there much now. But when it did, and when it does, kids there know exactly what to do.

Beg their moms to make snow ice cream.

It was my mother who showed my sister and me that you could make ice cream out of snow. That may have been one of the biggest regrets of our mom’s life. Every winter snowfall until we left home, we begged her to ...

As a kid, I thought that every family did exactly the same things ours did. That included what and how we did Christmas.

Turned out, there were two ways to approach collecting your loot. That is to say, seeing what Santa brought. One, which was more traditional, was waiting until Christmas morning like they do in the movies.

The other was having all of the festivities on Christmas Eve.

I truly felt sorry for the kids who had to wait until Christmas morning, ...

When you first learn to drive, there are a few things that are, shall we say, intimidating.

For me, there was parallel parking and changing lanes at high speeds. Both of which were challenging in a 1971 Buick Electra 225 Limited, which was one of Detroit’s longer offerings. Seemed to be the length of a Greyhound Bus and almost required an airport tarmac to turn it around.

Driving from my hometown of Ashdown, Arkansas, to the twin cities of Texarkana, Arkansas and ...

It’s time the lunchroom ladies got their due.

At Burke Street Elementary in Ashdown, Arkansas, (and later at Ashdown High School) the kids in my grade were respectful of all adults. But just like at home, we sometimes complained about the food. Especially the food in the lunchroom.

Now, part of that had to do with the fact that my mom is a fabulous cook. She could cook a potato 50 different ways from Sunday. It made me a connoisseur of the ...

The late comedian Norm McDonald once joked about how just a century and a half ago, our great grandfather was lucky if he had one photo of himself.

With the advent of cell phones, Norm pointed out that a century and a half from now, people would proudly offer to show off a million photos of their great grandfather.

It’s funny because it’s true.

Those who didn’t grow up with an actual camera, film, and scrapbooks full of photos really have missed out ...

The ownership we feel for places we have lived seems absolute. Any house we’ve called home was ours. No one else’s. Even if several others lived in it before or after we did.

Such was the case of the house on Beech Street where my family lived in the 60s and early 70s in Ashdown, Arkansas.

I’ve written of that house more than once in this space. Each time I did, it never crossed my mind that a reader would reach out ...

If you look at what’s missing from this great land, it’s a barstool on which to sit, good home cookin’, and a counter on which to eat it.

The diners of yesterday need a revival.

It wasn’t just the amazing food; it also was the coffee that was served in cheap mugs by the waitresses who could juggle more things than a Ringling Brothers employee.

It was the truck drivers interacting with the locals. The locals were regaled by stories of the road seen from ...

When I was a kid in Ashdown, Arkansas, I was surrounded by old people. It wasn’t so much that all of the other folks were actually old it’s just that when you’re a kid, everyone besides you seems old.

Not only did they seem old, they acted old. They ate old. They watched old. They drove old. They wore their hair old. They smelled old.

I’ll clarify that last one momentarily.

When you’re young, you have unlimited energy. I’m reminded of this every ...

We called it light bread. Others called it white bread. Regardless of what it was called, in my hometown of Ashdown, Arkansas and most of the rest of the South it was the foundation of the Southern food pyramid.

And it was found aplenty at our home on Beech Street. You never knew when company might come.

Over the years, I slowly fell away from light bread. I was encouraged to eat wheat and other “healthy” breads by well-intentioned doctors and wives.

But ...