Ain't That A Kick In The Head

Bought at a police auction. The gear shift was held on with a coat hanger. When my son graduated from NC State he and his girlfriend (now wife) decided to take the epic road trip. They loaded up his two door Cavalier with camping gear and a cooler and headed off to California, hitting every quirky roadside attraction along the way. The post cards attest that they also landed at a fair number of breweries and distilleries, so the time wasn’t totally wasted. Late one night they pulled up to a  campground and were told “Sorry, we’re full.” The result was they slept in the car sitting up. Ryan attempted to work his feet around the clutch and other pedals as he tried unsuccessfully to get comfortable.  He later said “If I EVER do this again I will drive something I can sleep in.” Drive something I can sleep in…I thought that was brilliant. If a person had one of those vehicles it would open up all sorts of possibilities. That would mean that anything within 300 miles or so...

Me and Mom (1933-2018) My mom was born in 1933. Her mother was a school teacher, her dad was a county agent. (That is one of those people who is employed by the Department of Agriculture to help farmers with their crops.)  By all accounts she was a well-rounded and accomplished young lady. In high school she was voted Most Li kely To Succeed and Most Popular. She was a member of the 4-H Club, a good student, and an excellent athlete. As a member of the school’s basketball team and, at just 5’2” and 100 pounds, she once scored 33 points in a single game. Bear in mind, this was around 1950. At the time most teams didn’t score that much.  Standard Sized Racquet After high school she attended the University of Georgia, just as her father had. She contemplated majoring in music, because she was also a gifted pianist, but instead she decided to pursue another love: science. She received her BS in Chemistry. It was along about this time, with both the...

When I was a little kid our church attendance was fairly infrequent, maybe a couple of times a year. That was fine by me since didn’t much care for it. At dinner we would skip grace and Daddy would announce the commencement of eating with the single word: “begin”. With that, he would spear the choicest piece of meat for himself and for the rest of us it was like a cage match of consumption. This is probably the reason why, without even trying, I can still easily finish a full dinner in under 5 minutes.  Ike Godsey cuts my hair for a nickle. At some point in the early 70’s, Daddy went from "no religion", past the midway point of “some religion”, to the full-throttle “born again”. I’m sure this was as puzzling to other folks as it was to me. He had had no life event to cause the change…no near-death experience to contemplate or new business partner to woo. He was still as ornery as ever and still drank enough to get periodic thank-you notes from the distillery. Fr...

Left to right: Sarah, Signe, Melissa. This past March we attended a niece’s wedding in rural North Carolina. We were happy to celebrate with the new couple and it was also a great time to see family. The reception was held in a large barn that was designed for such events. Towards the end of the evening, the weather cooled and Nana complained of being cold. We closed the large door that we were sitting next to and that is when we met the woman at the adjacent table. We weren’t formally introduced and never got her name, but it was probably Tammy. She looked to be in her late 20s or early 30s and was just a big ole surly country girl. For some reason, she found the situation with the door very irritating. She made a face like someone had farted in the elevator and demanded to know what we were doing. We explained that Nana was chilly. She    replied that now everyone else was going to have to be hot just because one old lady said she was cold. We told her that there w...

For Pink Floyd it was almost worth it. The summer after eighth grade I stole a Pink Floyd album and two butane lighters. When I got caught Daddy told me I was “a one man crime wave.” He did not spare the vitriol as he lectured me on how this would make him and my step mother look to the community. Whenever I was on the receiving end of the our-good-name diatribe, I couldn't help but think that their own antics could inspire standing ovations in an Arkansas trailer park. But that didn't change the fact that I had boosted almost $10 of merchandise and it was just horrible to wonder what the hoi polloi of rural Virginia would think. So in a bold master stroke to salvage the tattered remnants of their reputation, they had me committed to a 24-hour lockdown in a psychiatric hospital. Friends, I shit you not. The Westbrook Sanatorium for the Mentally Ill was thankfully renamed Westbrook Psychiatric Hospital sometime before I got there. It was located about a two hour drive ...