I have nowhere else to place the blame–not on laziness, not on sickness. So I will blame it on this chair. It’s an old recliner that has already tumbled down the stairs of time twice before we moved it into the bedroom. It looks a lot like something Fred Sanford might sit on. Sitting in it, away from the TV and other distractions, is where I do most of my writing. I’m sitting in it now. It’s a good chair, and it fits me. It’s like the driver’s seat in my old truck, where—after almost 400,000 miles of interaction—we have molded into one; it has filled in the blanks, so to speak. Except for ..read more

“You sure spent a lot of money today,” Better Half cheerily said while I bumbled through the doorway dragging a suitcase, new fishing rig, and other assorted packages. She quickly gave me a hand, something she rarely does, and began investigating the plastic bags. After discovering my new tennis shoes, fifteen fishing lures, and a stylish hunting vest her face began to frown. “How much did this cost?” she asked with a coming edge in her voice. “Oh nothing,” I replied quickly. “There’s a new program when we buy jet fuel on the road. We get gift certificates and…” “That’s nice,” she mumbled drop ..read more

Many years ago, my friend Rick Hedricks talked me into going with him duck hunting on the Apalachicola River about 10 miles north of Blountstown. Where we ended up was literally in the middle of nowhere. If you have ever hunted a duck, you know that it is an early morning operation. Rick picked me up at my house at 3:30 in the morning, and we drove almost an hour to Aspalaga, landing on the river. We put his duck boat in the water and filled it with two bags of duck decoys, guns, and ammo, then started down the river. A good five miles later, we pulled the boat up on the shore and unloaded. We ..read more

Twenty-two years before the outbreak of the American Civil War, a former English stage actress began four months of recording life from her new husband’s plantation estate on the coast of Georgia. This series of letters was eventually compiled and published by abolitionists and is regarded today as the most detailed account of plantation slavery in the antebellum South ever to be recorded. by Richard James Lane, printed by Charles Joseph Hullmandel, published by Joseph Dickinson, after Sir Thomas Lawrence lithograph, published 20 December 1829Frances Anne Kemble (known as Fanny) was born in No ..read more

You position yourself in the seat, the safety restraint is put in place, and the thrill begins. The car you’re in moves to a steep incline that slowly goes up and up almost forever. If you are in the front seat, you teeter over the edge and anticipate a drop that looks like the wheels will leave the supporting structure. Of course, I’m describing a ride on a rollercoaster. I dream of theme parks of today and amusement parks of yesterday. When I was young, amusement parks and traveling fairs all included a merry-go-round, a Ferris wheel, the rotor, swings, and a rollercoaster. Today’s adul ..read more

My parents moved to Guthrie, Kentucky, from Adams, Tennessee, in 1963, right before my fourth birthday. My father felt we needed to live where he worked so we could be part of the community. His new job was as a laborer at the Guthrie Feed Mill. They set up housekeeping in a two-bedroom house rented from Mr. Joe Stahl on Third Street. It was about a block and a half from the Feed Mill. Most days, my dad walked to work because we owned one car. In the evenings’ my mother sometimes sent me to the corner of Third and Cherry to meet him and walk the half-block home. I was inquisitive, so I peppere ..read more

In the fall of 1937, Flix Bushaloo Breazeale had an idea that would bring him worldwide fame in less than a year. Breazeale was seventy-three years old and was known as “Uncle Bush” to all who knew him. During a conversation with a local businessman, the man asked Uncle Bush “what he was going to do with the walnut tree growing near his house.” Uncle Bush declared, “Gonna make my coffin out of it.” His answer to the man’s question led to a discussion of death, dying, funerals, and funeral services. During this conversation, the businessman asked Uncle Bush a question; “Isn’t it a shame that we ..read more

Susan and I hadn’t been married long in 1974. For me, it was time for life to get serious—time to leave behind a world of chainsaws and wannabe outlaws full of blank stares and double-dog-dares. I was driving railroad spikes and trying to decide which burned me worse, the bright August sun or the dark creosote crossties. Susan was packing my lunches every morning, then driving our ‘62 Dodge to Panama City to learn how to build hairdos at a beauty school. As the old saying goes, she was learning how to “make silk purses out of sows’ ears.” We were living in Wewa in a run-down rental house ..read more

In the best tradition of Fibber McGee’s closet, my parents kept a kitchen cabinet drawer for miscellaneous items. If you looked inside, you would find any number of things that had no permanent home. There were rubber bands that both stretched and those that didn’t. There were marbles, paper clips, spare keys to long-ago sold cars, tools for small repairs, band-aids, outdated maps, flashlights with dead batteries, loose pocket change, and lots of pens and pencils. When I was a young child, there seemed to be thousands of loose pens and pencils in that drawer. The “junk drawer” was always the f ..read more

When I see a pear tree, my mind goes back to how I would sometimes stop after teaching all day at a little country store in Niagara. In fact, it was the tiny town’s only store…. surrounded like an island by several stop signs. I would let my children pick out a drink and a snack. Especially if they had all my classroom pencils sharpened and papers on the primary-colored kidney-shaped tables for the next day. Savannah and Cameron liked looking at the small store over from top to bottom and enjoyed more variety than I did. Dessert of the day was always a good choice for this tired teacher. All o ..read more