Indian Mall

The Indian Mall was, for half a century, the crown jewel of North East Arkansas shopping. Paragould, Batesville, Blytheville, nor West Memphis had anything even remotely like it. It was cool, air conditioned indoor shopping on hot summer days and warm dry shopping on cold, rainy winter nights.

Kill Ball

As an underclassman, I remember fear the first time we all walked onto the basketball court in Junior High to play kill ball. I had never played before. Most of the ninth graders were nine feet tall. Eighth graders werent that tall. They were only eight feet tall. Seventh graders, we were tiny. We were… Read more »

Interacting With The Spirit World

In Fall of 1994, I moved from Memphis, Tennessee to Allentown, Pennsylvania. After living in an Embassy Suites hotel for a few months, I finally committed to an apartment of sorts. It was actually the upper floor of a place called the Mauch Chunk Hotel. It was 200 years old and was located on Mauch… Read more »

The Best Thing About Waking Up

I have an ax to grind with the weasel who first conceived the idea of putting images and messages on coffee mugs. You know, coffee mugs that have pictures or phrases on them commemorating places you’ve been or offering some funny observation. Those are the ones. I have about fifty of them, and I can’t… Read more »

Friday Night in Pensacola

Have you ever been to a bar or restaurant that was so good or so much fun that you almost didn’t want to tell anyone about it so that it didn’t get overrun? I knew a place like that in Memphis and now I’ve found one in Pensacola. Upstairs above The District Steakhouse, there is… Read more »

The Importance of Reading Instructions

Recently, my wonderful wife and I have been reminiscing about the joy of trying to teach teenagers to read the instructions that accompany new things. Some things are complicated to operate, and kids tend to ignore the instructions and just begin messing with the ‘thing’ until they either break it, or it works. With Ipads… Read more »

Boxes of Crap

Boxes of crap always pose unseen dangers for me. I keep mementos. I have a spirit ribbon from a Douglas MacArthur Junior High football game in 1972. I’m sure it meant something at one time, but I seem to have killed the brain cells that held that memory. I can’t throw it away because I… Read more »

Memphis

I haven’t lived in Memphis for over 30 years. For many of those years, I flew in and out of Memphis on a fairly semi-regular basis. Holidays and birthday always brought me back. In those days Memphis was a hub and there was a direct flight on Northwest from the cold, gray skies of New… Read more »

Momma and The Senator from Arkansas

Come July, Mom has been gone for 14 years. Each time we visit Jonesboro, we visit the cemetery where she and dad, as well as Coachie and Miss Dot rest. We give each a little bourbon, and we have a drink with them. We’ve done this so often and for so long, I’m surprised that… Read more »

Always the Last to Know.

There are times in your life when you discover things that are shocking, completely unexpected, just out of the clear blue sky. People manage these moments in different ways. We all have friends who are blessed with grace and poise, a calm demeanor able to absorb difficult news with control and dignity. I’m not one… Read more »

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Latest

  • Doctors and Dogs

    50 years ago, a single hit during a football drill at practice changed the course my football life. I had been a quarterback, and now I was not. From the brown and dusty grass of the Douglas MacArthur Junior High School football field to a very clean, cool and sterile OR at West Florida Hospital,… Read more »

  • There is Magic in Gumbo

    There is magic in Gumbo. That’s just a fact. There is no recipe for making gumbo, only a tradition and a culture. You can’t make it without wine and music. You can fudge just about everything else, but you gotta have wine and music. I start with some Cabernet, and some Waylon tunes, unless I… Read more »

  • May 10th, 1994

    May 10th 1994, Landi and I departed Jamaica much wiser than when we arrived there some ten days prior. We were there for our honeymoon. In our ten wonderful days there, we learned much about a wonderful island, its’ people, its’ culture and ourselves. I, for one, learned to never let a drunk woman put… Read more »

  • Memorial Day

    Fifty years is a long time. Sometimes it’s hard to remember details. Sometimes, as we age, dates drift further into the deep recesses of our memory and the details blur together. Things become indistinct. There are some things we can’t quite remember. There are some things we just can’t forget. Friday, May 26th I remember… Read more »

  • A Bachelor’s Party

    While visiting on the phone with my son, Catfish, yesterday, he mentioned that he was going to Nashville pretty soon for a friend’s bachelor party. He was excited about it because while in Nashville, in addition to bar hopping and general fun, they planned to go to a concert by some currently fashionable country singer…. Read more »

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    Beebe, Arkansas

    On a very hot and exceedingly humid September Sunday night in 1977, I lay sweating in an un-air-conditioned dorm room in Beebe Arkansas listening to a radio station from Little Rock as it was about play an album released by Willie Nelson. Though I had been a fan of outlaw country music (Jerry Jeff Walker)… Read more »

  • When Lynyrd Skynyrd Came to Town.

    In early 1974, an unknown band from Florida became famous almost overnight when “Free Bird” became an instant southern anthem. With a monster hit song, the album “Pronounced Len-nerd Skin-nerd” kept selling out everywhere. Word quickly spread through Jonesboro that Lynyrd Skynyrd had been booked to play at the Strand theater and there were less… Read more »

  • The Coast

    It is in the dead of winter that my mind wanders during household chores. While doing something in the bed room, my eye caught sight of something that sent me back in time. On my night stand there stands a small, lonely trophy. It is from the Broadwater Beach Hotel in Biloxi, Mississippi. It is… Read more »

  • Things Worth Remembering

    There are things worth remembering about growing up in small towns. I remember the oddest of things. I remember pimento cheese. A small grocery store on Flint Street called Lundy’s used to have the finest piminto cheese on the face of the earth. Lundy’s was a neighborhood grocery store right across Flint Street from the… Read more »

  • Waffle House #393

    Waffle House at 8:00AM is a microcosm of America. The counter and the booths are full. You’ve got the elderly Marine Corp veteran eating alone, looking through the window at memories of rice fields and triple canopy jungles. You’ve got the two debutante wannabes eating in a booth. Four brothers are laughing and eating a… Read more »