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IN PRAISE OF THE LOWLY DOOR KNOB
Most of us use the door knob on frequent occasions and think nothing of it. The purpose of this small essay is to give the proper praise to the door knob for the service that it has provided to humanity over the years. Simply put, if there were no door knobs, it would be difficult…
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REMARKS TO MRS. BRIBER’S FOURTH GRADE CLASS, GLENWOOD SCHOOL
All things considered, I was born in the year of 1922. I had nothing to do with the date that I was born. Those questions were settled by my parents. As it turns out, I was born the seventh child to a family who tended to the fortunes of the Lilac Roost Farm. It was…
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NON-BREAKING NEWS FROM LONG HILL DRIVE
Three non-breaking news items have occurred in recent weeks and they constitute the essence of this essay. In the past few weeks we have been met by an invasion of breaking news from Washington as well as from itinerant politicians. All things considered, the breaking news has had its share of attention. The burden of…
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MURDER IN MISSISSIPPI
As it so happens, I finished my glorious career in the Army of the United States, not the United States Army, in the great state of Mississippi. I use that title, “the great state of Mississippi,” because it is always used by politicians. In August of 1945, I had returned to this country after 28…
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MAYBE LILLIE WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG
The Lillie in the title of this essay is my mother, to whom you have been introduced before. Lillie was born in Pope County, Illinois on the banks of the Ohio River in a community called Lusk. It was not a town at all. It was simply a landing spot for the folks who traversed…
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A PAIL OF HOME BREW
During the period of the 1920s, there was a resurgence of thought pioneered basically by Southerners. It resulted in the banning of the sale and use of beer. The Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution banned the manufacture and sale of alcohol and came to be known as the Prohibition Act. Prohibition was widely flouted. It…
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DECISIONS
As we march through life, there are thousands of decisions that must be made. A high proportion of them are made by ourselves. At the same time, outside forces make many of the decisions for us. All things considered, I would like to have the decision-making made by myself but I know that is an…
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KATHLEEN MAVOURNEEN: AN ADVENTURE STORY
During the 1930s and 40s, and perhaps a bit longer, there was a magnificent tenor who appeared in several productions of The Metropolitan Opera as well as in concerts. He also appeared on radio and later on television programs like The Bell Telephone Hour and The Firestone Hour. I was glad to tell people that…
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A THOUGHT OR TWO ABOUT TOM SCANDLYN
Somewhere in this batch of essays, there is one called “Old Age is a Disease.” That was a tribute to Hana Davis’s mother and to Howard Davis’s mother-in-law. As I noted at the end of that essay, I never had the opportunity to meet the author of those lines about old age being a disease. …
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GEORGIA
I am dictating these lines on the afternoon of February 14, which of course is St. Valentine’s Day. The object of this essay is to pay tribute to a lovely woman who has been my friend for perhaps 30 years. This essay has nothing to do with the state of Georgia in this country or…