244 articles
August 12, 2025
I was driving up to Tennessee yesterday when an old gospel song you probably won’t remember came blasting over the airwaves, “Everybody’s gonna have religion in glory, Everybody’s gonna be singing that story….”
August 5, 2025
I sometimes feel sorry for people who live in large cities. Actually, I feel sorry for them most of the time, because they’ll never get to experience what the small town I live in just experienced.
August 5, 2025
“Be home by supper” wasn’t some kind of catchy pastoral phrase back in the days of front porches and lemonade laden afternoons.
July 29, 2025
When used effectively, “stop” is one of the most powerful four-letter words at our disposal.
July 29, 2025
No attempt at humor today. I’m sitting in a hospital waiting room. Waiting. Time has slowed to a lazy snail’s pace. Minutes have crept into hours. Morning has crawled into afternoon. It is open heart surgery. And the patient is the only brother I have left.
July 22, 2025
My mother’s voice came to me in a dream. “David, wake up.”
July 22, 2025
I don’t know if you grew up close to a rival town. But if you did, I have a story for you today.
July 15, 2025
PEOPLE WITH AN ADDICTION ARE some of the kindest, meanest, most truthful, most deceitful, gentlest, cruelest, quietest, loudest, hardest working, laziest, most giving, most selfish, most loving, most heartless, most caring, most uncaring, most humble, most prideful people on the planet, which simply means they are the extreme versions of ourselves because we all can have any and all of those traits at any given time.
July 15, 2025
LaRenda Bradfield called to tell me our 60th high school reunion is going to be in late September. I pondered on that for half a second. Late September is three months away! That might be too long for some of us….
July 15, 2025
Do you think Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR) was talking about a full moon when they wrote “Bad Moon Rising?” I can see how a full moon would inspire someone to write a cautionary tale.
July 8, 2025
I took it for granted. I believe everyone else did too. It was just water after all. Oh sure, it was cool, clear, clean, and refreshing—especially on a hot July day after you’d run all the way from the baseball field over by the Pajama Factory to the house.
July 8, 2025
I was young and green, two things that often go together, which made me ripe for picking. And Vaughnell loved to pick at people, with genuine, good-hearted intent. You had to be careful around her or else she’d have you twisted up and turned around at the end of one of her tales.
July 1, 2025
It was my Father’s favorite holiday. By far! You would think it was because of his three plus years of service in the Army during World War II.
July 1, 2025
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about Mary, the mother of Jesus, and what it must have been like to witness the torture and death her son endured. I put myself in her shoes and try to imagine what I would have thought and felt to see my child treated that way.
June 24, 2025
Standing in the hospital lobby, waiting for the elevator to open, I anxiously bit my lip. It seemed like I hadn’t seen my daddy in forever. But then, to a ten-year-old time crept at an agonizingly slow pace.
June 24, 2025
This story has four beginnings. I am going to burden you with all of them because each one is germane to where we are going here….and I have a deep abiding faith in your ability to keep up.
June 17, 2025
She was small for her age.
June 17, 2025
I’m always looking for ways to enhance my storytelling.
June 17, 2025
I disappeared for a week… well, actually six days. Left town, didn’t check my email, didn’t check Facebook, didn’t watch the news, drove nine hours with two little ones and a husband in tow to put our feet in the sand and leave our worries in Tennessee. We went to Gulf Shores, AL.
June 10, 2025
Every mornin he came out of his house and boarded the school bus, his red-rimmed eyes and tear-stained cheeks betrayed how homesick he felt the farther he got away from home.
