November 19, 2020 - I vividly recall a “ritual” that we kids performed after the Thanksgiving and Christmas meals back in my early years. This activity was passed down to our children but seems to have been lost to the current crop of kids.

October 30, 2020 - I grew up in the part of Texas that was notorious for its moonshine distillers. In fact, while in college in 1955, my roommate was the son of a family known for their moonshine making. I had never encountered real moonshine until *Jim began bringing a gallon of the stuff to our boarding house every Sunday afternoon. It would last our residents an entire week.

October 8, 2020 - P.T Barnum was right when he said that “there’s a sucker born every minute.”  I am living proof of that, having been taken for a sucker while on a vacation trip in 1965. I hope that my experience will be a warning to others who let their eyes overpower their brains.

August 27, 2020 - I need to make this perfectly clear at the outset, I did not play with dolls or doll houses when I was a young boy. However, when I was in the sixth grade at San Augustine, Texas Junior High, our homeroom teacher decided that we needed a class project to work on during the semester. Mrs. Dan Lowe decided that our class should build a doll house, or a model home. So, she drew up some plans, much like an architect would do.

August 18, 2020 - Every neighborhood needs a nurse, a woman who is always there to doctor the kids’ skinned knees, insect bites, minor cuts, and abrasions that are a part of life in the ‘hood’. When our family lived in Houston, Texas in the early 1970s, a Mrs. Whatley performed this activity in the Westbury neighborhood in which we lived. Through this “asphalt jungle” snaked a drainage ditch which attracted kids of all ages. My pre-teen son, Doug, loved to play with his buddies in this drainage ditch.