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Could I borrow a cup of chiggers?

That may sound like a strange question but after you already have a whole hoard move in on you, what’s a few more? I was filming a movie outside Nashville when I noticed that I had an extreme need to reach down a scratch my leg again and again. I wasn’t even filming outside where […]

A Shell, the Porch Swing and a Screen Door

 I reached down and pulled out a freshwater oyster shell from the branch next to Washington Road and ran up to my grandma who was leaning on a fence post nearby. “Is there a chance I can find a pearl?” She looked at it and said, “You already got one, and she’s your mother.”      As […]

Alone in a crowd

As I scanned the banquet hall filled wall to wall with people, I saw many faces that struck a memory of meeting in the past. Through the years with some of them, I had even become what might be described as friends. People with whom I had shared common experiences, told stories and found the […]

Is the richness of debate a dying art?

I am learning that the field of earnest debate between people is becoming an art that is no longer appreciated nor desired by many. I will never forget the joy as a youth of learning the skills of debate, of working to bring someone who was on the other side of an issue into your […]

Kicking the can down the road

I reached over and picked up the can I found along the roadside and looked at it before I tossed it into a nearby trashcan. It carried me back to the carefree days when such a find would result in me kicking the can down the road for a ways. Summer always was filled with […]

The Spirit of the generations

Have you ever really wondered where it is you are from? How did your folks come to be in this place or how did you get to where you are? Can you point to some place and say that there is home? I have spent a lot of time of late looking back upon our […]

Family ties make us stronger

The importance of one’s family connections is something that I believe we are losing in America. With each generation there are fewer individuals who live close to their extended families, unlike the days when grandma and grandpa lived just in the next room or uncles, aunts and cousins were a short walk down the road. […]

Western movie memories

When you think of western films even forty plus years after the passing of the legendary John Wayne, who comes to most people’s minds? Who can ever forget his greater than life presence on the screen no matter what film was rolling through the projector like “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,” “The Man Who Shot Liberty […]

Fear not

Fear is something that hides deep within each of us as we walk through life. I remember as a child, as many of my fellow youth gleefully looked to getting their first bicycle, within me was a sense of dread. I was comfortable with the tricycle and the insecurity of falling and losing my balance […]