Category Archives: Uncategorized

Bake Sales Many of our childhood school activities fall by the wayside as we grow older. Today I don’t play tetherball or box hockey. I haven’t roller skated in years. I don’t think I’ve played an all-out game of dodge ball since the Carter administration, and I haven’t played tackle football since I was inContinue reading “Bake Sales”

Viral Victuals I’ve got a virus. My particular virus is not influenza, a common cold, or a computer virus. I don’t have chickenpox, mumps, Ebola, or rabies. There are many viruses with exotic and interesting names such as: cereal yellow dwarf virus, Leaky virus, and Four Corners hantavirus. There are virus named after plants andContinue reading “Viral Victuals”

Blessed Fish and My Grandmother’s Lamb We are smack dab in the middle of the Lenten Season and Easter is only a few weeks away. This time of year always brings memories of my grandmother’s dining room. Easters used to be elaborate occasions in my family— new church clothes, hidden candy tucked away in pastel-coloredContinue reading “Blessed Fish and My Grandmother’s Lamb”

Spring Break Diary Day One: Saturday 4:30a.m.— I wake up early for a 9:30a.m. flight out of Jackson. Last night I told my wife we needed to leave the house no later than 6:30 a.m. I organize luggage, locate airline tickets, and condo confirmation numbers. The rest of my family sleeps peacefully. 6:23 a.m.— MyContinue reading “Spring Break Diary”

Pancakes and Passings I buried my grandmother today. She was the only one I had left. I was fortunate to have spent all of my childhood and a good part of my early adult years with both grandmothers, each playing a crucial role in my upbringing. My paternal grandmother passed away 17 years ago, myContinue reading “Pancakes and Passings”

Little Biscuits, Big Appetites The fondest food memories of my youth are drawn from my grandmother’s house. For 70-plus years my paternal grandmother lived in a large white house on an oak-lined, brick-paved street in my hometown of Hattiesburg, Miss. Her home had 13-foot ceilings, Oriental rugs, crystal chandeliers, European antiques, and a window-unit airContinue reading “Little Biscuits, Big Appetites”

Over the six-plus years I have written this column I have never missed a week. At 750 words each week, that’s roughly 253,500 words total, depending on how badly I am censored by my editors. Over the course of that period, I have stirred up more controversy, frustrated more editors, upset more newspaper readers, andContinue reading “Remove the Foot and Eat Some Crow”

Easy Bake Oven 2007 When I was six-years old, I asked Santa Claus for an Easy-Bake Oven. He gave me one. My brother his friends gave me a hard time about it, but they always ate the miniature cakes and pizzas that came out of the plastic, cyan-colored cooking toy. They might have ribbed me,Continue reading “Easy Bake Oven 2007”

Angels, and Devils, and Diets, Oh My! I picked the wrong month to go on a diet. Like a million other slugs out there, I started dieting the day after New Year’s. Since then, business travels have taken me on several waistline-expanding trips. For the first several days I walked around with a diet angelContinue reading “Angels, and Devils, and Diets, Oh My!”