Growing up in the Sixties, before National Lampoon came along and Playboy magazines were something you heard about or occasionally found hidden in your father’s closet, there was Mad Magazine. Mad Magazine started in the Fifties and took off in the Sixties, featuring satire and humor aimed mostly at politics and pop culture. My best friend at school introduced me… Read moreMad Magazine | What, Me Worry?
Fifty-five years ago I became a Dallas Cowboys fan. It was the first football game I had ever attended above the level of Pop Warner. The game took place Christmas Eve, 1967 in the Cotton Bowl Stadium. The Cowboys were playing the Cleveland Browns for the Eastern Conference Championship. The winner would play either the Green Bay Packers or the… Read moreIndisputably The Frozen Tundra | The Ice Bowl
“Hamburgers! The cornerstone of any nutritious breakfast!” Of course, hamburgers are not, as Samuel L. Jackson said in Pulp Fiction, the cornerstone of any nutritious breakfast. As a kid growing up, the cornerstone of any nutritious breakfast was cereal, at least in my neighborhood. It was quick, easy and a lot of fun. Whenever I went with my mother to… Read moreThe Best To You Each Morning | Right Out Of The Box
Our backyard birds disappeared about a month or so ago. I don’t mean just a few of them are gone. I mean all of them, even the squirrels and chipmunks. It’s pretty bad when the squirrels split. We have eighteen feeders around our house, including seed feeders, suet cages, a seed cake cage, thistle socks, three bluebird houses and a… Read moreBackyard Birds | Gone With The Wind
Any game is a game of inches. Inches away ‘from the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.’ A wide receiver stretches his entire body and misses a pass that is off of his fingertips by an inch, which would’ve resulted in a game-winning touchdown instead of a loss. A shortstop just misses a ball inches from the webbing… Read moreJust A Bit Outside | A Game Of Inches
Coach Dooley is gone. I pulled up social media yesterday and the first post I saw was from my friend Shad. I read her words and choked up. Over the last few weeks I knew they would come sooner than later. They were still a shock, nonetheless. Vincent Joseph Dooley became the head football coach at Georgia in 1963. He… Read moreCoach Dooley | That Bright Young Coach
So far, this has been a spring and summer of baseball for Jackie and I. From the time he played Tee-ball, we have always gone to her grandson Gavin’s games. He has blossomed into a splendid player, alternating between shortstop, pitcher and first base. He batted leadoff this season and after taking batting lessons over the winter, learned to hit… Read moreThe Boys of Summer | Our Field of Dreams
The sentence I am about to write is the hardest one I have ever written and one I never thought I would write. Barry Pratt is gone. His passing leaves a huge hole in the lives of the many who knew him, none more so than his wife Debbie, his children Brandi, Krystle and Kevin and his brother Kenny. I… Read moreBarry | He’s Already There
When I was in the sixth grade at Gresham Park Elementary, one of our teachers, Miss Crawford, would read a chapter from a book to us each day for about the last thirty minutes of class. Miss Crawford was young and pretty with a remarkable ability for reading aloud that kept kids engaged and enthralled. The books she read to… Read moreBig Red | The Book, Not The Movie
At 6:00 pm yesterday, after working since I was sixteen and following a career in graphic arts and printing, which began forty-five years ago at DeKalb Technical College, I officially retired. It has been a great ride and I have had the pleasure of working with many wonderful and talented people, as well as the unpleasant experience of working with a… Read moreRetired | The First Day Of The Rest Of Our Lives
