[August 28, 2023] The movie scared me more than 60 years ago, and I still get shivers from that memory of watching the original 1933 adventure horror animal film King Kong. I was 9 years old, my brother two years younger, and we had somehow convinced our Mom to take us to this classic and frightening show, most… Read More »
[August 19, 2023] I wouldn’t say I liked school. I never liked school. It’s not that I hated school or was disgusted by it. Going to class every day just wasn’t what I wanted to do. Of course, today, I disapprove of that attitude, it’s not very helpful, and it worked greatly to my disadvantage. Alas, I did… Read More »
[August 16, 2023] When my brother was five, and I was seven, my father took us on a three-day camping trip down the Sabine River on the Texas-Louisiana border. This would be a “man’s trip,” talking man things, my dad getting to know us better, fishing, cooking over a campfire, sleeping under the open sky, and floating downstream… Read More »
[August 10, 2023] As early as I can remember, at least since I was a very young child, I wanted to be a Firefighter, and it was my life’s goal, yet I was young and terribly inexperienced and naïve. Like any kid with potential, I could be anything, but I knew I did not want to work with… Read More »
[August 5, 2023] In the summer of 1966, just before High School, I helped a local potato farmer with his crops. I don’t remember if I ever had a dirtier job, yet I both enjoyed and hated working the fields because it was a cross between picking cotton and cleaning pigpens; it was smelly, sweltering, filthy, humid, and… Read More »
[July 29, 2023] My first fistfight, the first of many, began with my best friend. He lived next door, was my age and in the same grade, looked a lot like me, yet we were always at odds, often angry at each other. Yet, looking back, I cannot recall a single reason for being angry or any reason… Read More »
[July 24, 2023] From the earliest days of my young life! My Granddaddy Smith owned a large, mangy, ugly, tough, mean-as-heck tomcat. His name? “Tom.” More kittens were born because of his virility than any cat in that town. His harem of female cats was huge, but they all served a valuable function on Granddaddy’s property by… Read More »
[July 19, 2023] My dad was a New York Yankees fan, and by default, so was I. To this day, I never knew why; we lived in the Deep South, where professional baseball was king, but my dad still insisted the Yankees were the team we would follow, and all three of us kids (later four) will always… Read More »
[July 16, 2023] He was an obnoxious, arrogant, self-centered, spiteful bully with a streak of hate running through his black heart. Our family had just moved to a new town, and I was academically transferred to my new Junior High, just a few miles from where I grew up but, in actuality, an entire world away. I… Read More »
[July 14, 2023] I was sitting in church with my family in late February 1962, only a few weeks shy of my 10th birthday, with my favorite yo-yo in my front pocket. My friends and I ran outside to do the “John Glenn” trick when the sermon concluded. This yo-yo trick would be three loops around and… Read More »