I’ve been known to have a sweet tooth on occasion, and those who know me well know I never say no to chocolate in just about any form, although dark chocolate makes me smile less than milk chocolate does. Since others in my family share the same sweet tooth, I’ve heard it explained as something… Continue reading A Stop at the Candy Factory

In a few days, you will empty your bedroom of the things you like and you will move into a college room, filling it with some of the things from your old room, but we both know this move is more than just moving from one room into another room. You will walk out the… Continue reading As My Daughter Leaves for College

Exiting I-20 as you head Abilene way and snugly tucked away on East Broadway Street in Sweetwater, you’ll see an old faded sign that reads, “Allen’s Family Style Meals.” Whatever you do and however behind schedule you think you are, stop and pull into the small parking lot. If you missed the sign, turn around… Continue reading Companions

Reading the newspaper the other day, I learned that my childhood friend, Nancy Drew, celebrates her 90th birthday later this year. Honestly, I didn’t know she was that old, still thinking of her as the plucky sixteen-year-old girl that I knew back in my younger days. Nor did I know there was such an age… Continue reading Learning to Read

We should put the blame where it belongs. The three kings are the ones to blame for the commercialization of Christmas. While their intentions may have been good, the results are less than stellar, no pun intended. As the annual holiday approaches each year, sales starting earlier and earlier, with stores putting snowmen and stockings… Continue reading Blame the Magi

She’s the happiest girl in the whole USA. Maybe not the girl Donna Fargo made famous in her 1972 hit song by the same title, but the carhop at the Sonic Drive-In that I see on Sunday afternoons. As I pull next to the digital menu at Sonic, push the red button on the intercom,… Continue reading Smiley Face

When time travel arrives, and you can choose to go backwards or forwards in time, which one will you take--yesterday or tomorrow? While the question is hypothetical, still it is something you may want to consider. Really, give it some thought as you do your workout on the treadmill or as you fight the commute… Continue reading Yesterday or Tomorrow?

Everybody knows there are two kinds of people in the world. Those who do and those who don't. Those who can and those who can't. Those who ask and those who don't ask. Out of a need to render a complex world more understandable, it seems we like to compress our knowledge into binaries: a… Continue reading To Hug or Not to Hug?

I admit I saw the backpack before I saw the back of the boy. Actually, I saw the three or four pieces of paper in the backpack before I saw anything else. For some reason they caught my eye—pages that looked like coloring sheets for a child. And they were partially colored, as children do,… Continue reading Backpack

As the balding man swept his over-sized yard rake across the dead leaves that had dropped to the ground after last week’s freeze, he just as easily could have been a barber sweeping up sheared strands of hair from the barbershop floor or a butcher with a squeegee in his hand sending blood-stained water down… Continue reading “Winter is Coming”