In mid afternoon, the National Weather Service in Wakefield, Virginia issued an air quality alert. The Weather Bug app on my Droid relayed this stifling event to me. The message was like a tornado warning except instead of twisting air, there was no air, just ozone. It smelled like a paper mill had cranked up [...]
Clear, blue skies pushed choking humidity to the last 20 feet above the crabgrass. That way, even tall people on a ladder or a drunk sitting in a lawn chair on top of his RV could feel it. Temps flirted with 100º. Baseball and water sports, hotdogs and alcohol happened simultaneously in every part of [...]
Christmas morning 1972. Smells of link sausage hang above a table filling with grits, eggs, cathead biscuits and homemade jelly from the blueberry bush out back. The aroma of Prell shampoo sneaks out from under the bathroom door and blends with the scents that were uncorked during Christmas Eve’s gift opening. For some reason wrapping [...]
I get a lot of catalogs this time of year. They are filled with fruitcakes, hams, smoked turkeys, cheese, jelly, cookies shaped like Santa, etc. So what do they do with this stuff come January? Hopefully they don’t save it until next year and put it in the next catalog. But since the half-life on [...]
Go to ESPN or Sports Illustrated and check out the college bowl games this year. There are 33 of them. We all know the Rose, Orange and Sugar Bowls. We know about the BCS Championship game. I’ll get excited about the Cotton, Gator and Fiesta Bowl. But did you know there is a Little Caesars [...]
When I was growing up, we weren’t exactly wealthy, to say the least. For entertainment during the holidays, my family (and sometimes friends) would brew up a Thermos of strong coffee, pile into the old Bel Air, fog up the windows, and ride around Montgomery, Alabama looking at Christmas lights and decorations in the nicer [...]
I heard part of this story and witnessed the other part of it. The year was 1974.
Down on Highway 29 headed south out of Andalusia, Alabama towards Florala and the Florida line, a single, tall evergreen tree leaned achingly toward the road. It had been bent over a little to the east by the winds [...]
Rudy loves to eat a big meal, ride around in the car, listen to seasonal music and look at Christmas lights. The sparkling strings hypnotize him into a holidaze. Last night we took him for a little ride through the neighborhood. He sat wide-eyed in the backseat, front leg propped against the armrest, leaning on [...]
Today is Thanksgiving. Turkeys work all year for this day. Only Groundhog Day is more associated with an animal. Bunnies and reindeer have prominent places at Easter and Christmas, to be sure, but bunnies, reindeer and groundhogs survive their holidays. Mr. Gobbler takes one for the team on Thanksgiving. Like many Americans in this economy, [...]
By October 1st, most stores have their holiday stuff splayed across several aisles where the garden paraphernalia resided for months. A row of Santas, chubby and grinning like Americans in line at the drive thru wait next to snowmen, reindeer, angels, Joseph, Mary, shepherds, wise men, and a few plastic animals. Boxes of lights, snowy [...]
I have written about fire ants before. But things have changed in the South. Call it global warming. Call it a fire ant invasion. Call it an environmental rash, whatever. I have experienced fire ants up close all of my life. I have never seen anything like this.
Many years ago when my nephew (now in his early thirties) was a child, I did something so stupid it has attached itself to me like a permanent holiday appendage: I wrangled a Santa suit and scared him so badly, it has become the stuff of family legend. After seeing how it stunted his emotional [...]
I can still hear wounded Santa cursing and swinging a red bamboo stick at shadows in the dark. He was an unlikely hero, a bruised saint, a twisted fantasy. He was not what any child expects at Christmas, which means he was perfect.
Today there are meek mall Santa?s who smile warmly and listen carefully to [...]
During the holidays, Dee Briggs had an idea. “I’m going to go to the grocery store and get a turkey and take it to Extra Billy’s (a local barbecue restaurant). They’ll smoke it. You want me to get you one?”
I was out of town when he called and quickly said, “Absolutely.” It sounded like a [...]
People can hear the yelling six houses down. It’s violent and ugly and causes pain and suffering. I grew up in the middle of the Braveheart-like struggle. Oh the horror, the guilt, the fake money.