“Are ya haaawngry?” In the 90s, that question by the late Harold Rowland became a running gag after church every Sunday, as he inquired where I, my wife and my parents would be eating. In the fut...

“Where’s your Bayer?” I vividly remember that question from my high school job working in a convenience market in my Tennessee hometown. A buxom young lady from out-of-town posed the query and I hel...

National Newspaper Week (October 1-7) compels me to acknowledge my journalistic catastrophe of fifth grade. Based on my passion for reading Nashville’s two dailies, Miss Bunch handed me the plum a...

Hot peppers bring tears to my eyes, but so does a family anecdote from my young adulthood. I was living with my parents and slept during the day because I worked graveyard shift. One day my mother...

So, now the fuzzy purple critter isn’t the only “grimace” I’ll associate with the McDonald’s chain. “I’m lovin’ it” was assuredly not my gut-level reaction when I read of a 10-year corporate plan to...

“So, Dan – what are you doing tonight?” After 40-plus years, I can still hear one of my best friends from MTSU asking that dreaded question. No matter how many homework assignments, romantic entan...

When I was five years old and my father worked for a subdivision developer, the Tyree family was giddily comparing floorplans for constructing a new house on a wooded lot next to our crowded domicile....

Yes, nearly 60 years after discovering “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” I still watch the classic sitcom; but some of the punchlines haven’t held up particularly well. Or maybe I’m the one who hasn’t...

I realize such headgear has fallen out of style in our self-esteem-obsessed culture, but maybe I should belatedly don a dunce cap. You see, one of my first columns (nearly 25 years ago) was a snarky...

I’ll never get over what the COVID-19 pandemic did to the Ollie’s discount chain. Pre-COVID, on my way to the restroom while shopping, I always sought out the coffee pot that announced sentiments to t...

If I could somehow call my father in the Great Beyond, I’d confess that I’m turning into him. I always felt sorry for Dad because inertia took control, and he continued paying a monthly rental fee...

My family will soon take advantage of our state’s tax-free weekend for clothing and school supplies, but none of our hard-earned money will go for distressed clothing. Coincidentally, none of the m...

Sometimes topics simply demand more research than a deadline allows. I couldn’t do justice to this week’s topic, so I’m kicking the can down the road by dishing out another batch of resea...

“Have you seen everything you want to see?” “Yeah. You?” “Me too. Let’s go back home.” That’s a paraphrased version of my parents’ conversation midway through their honeymoon in 1958. Unimpressed...

“We are the Cubs from Den 3/And no one could be prouder/If you cannot hear our shout/We’ll yell a little LOUDER.” That chant from my Cub Scout pack-meeting days comes to mind as I explore the issue...

When I was a young adult living under my parents’ roof, my late father always made sure I had Beanee Weenees, Vienna sausage, potted meat and other such snacks to take to my graveyard-shift factory j...

“Because I could not stop for cataracts, they kindly stopped for me.” Someday I hope to find time to luxuriate in the collected works of poets such as Emily Dickinson – on paper, not as an audio...

Maybe it’s a good thing that my teenage dream of becoming a TV programmer never materialized. Analysts have regarded the over-the-air free TV networks as dinosaurs for years, but now even the cable c...

It’s difficult to wrap my mind around it, but this will be my 20th Father’s Day as a father. All of those third Sundays in June have blurred together, but I certainly have warm memories of son Gideon...

I shudder to imagine how Aunt Marie (God rest her soul) would react to today’s explosion of expectations for tipping. Even back in pre-inflationary times, Aunt Marie (who always worked hard for her mo...

I still remember one of the houses that my parents ALMOST bought back in 1970. The domicile was memorable because it was right next door to the Hi-Way 50 Drive-in Theater and filled my young mind...

Meme: “A cultural item in the form of an image, video, phrase, etc., that is spread via the internet and often altered in a creative or humorous way,” explains dictionary.com. Some people are mer...

Sometimes it’s difficult to approach news items with the proper balance of bemusement, curiosity and wariness. (Sometimes it’s difficult to approach news items at all, when there are shouts of “When a...

As Mother’s Day approaches, it is appropriate that we discuss the physical characteristics, personality traits, coping mechanisms, etiquette rules, life ambitions, etcetera that we inherited from o...

“An allergy season so bad you don’t need allergies to feel miserable,” blared the headline in the Wall Street Journal. My own symptoms are relatively mild, but they do exist. I feel your pain. Espec...