There weren’t many ways to earn money as a Boomer teenager. Allowances were meager, maybe 50c a week. This was before child labor laws, where kids were required to do things like mow the lawn, load dishwashers, tend to younger brothers and sisters and help weed the garden for a lousy 50 cents a week. Summer offered some respite with a few lawn-mowing gigs, but there was often intense … [Read more...]

Every Boomer remembers test patterns. In the early days of television, each channel (usually one or two, that’s all we got) began the day and ended broadcasting with a test pattern on the screen. Most of us didn’t know what a test pattern was, really, or its purpose. All we knew that when the test pattern finally appeared (it took the tubes a while to warm up), there was nothing on the … [Read more...]

  Mama Ida worked for the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles in Raleigh for 40 years. She could look at a license plate number and tell which office and city it came from. Mama Ida was like a second mother to me. When my father was shot down in WWII, Mama Ida helped my young mother raise me and I always enjoyed spending as much time with her as I could. In the summer, when … [Read more...]

  Well, another year in the rearview window. As we head into 2020 it’s time to put things into perspective – to remember what’s really important in life, things that should take priority. Here is a bucket list of must-do things for the coming year. First and foremost, eat more hot dogs. Hot dogs are nature’s most perfect food. Where else can you bite into a steamed, fresh roll … [Read more...]

Christmas memories. Strange, how some things stick in your mind through all the years. A Christmas memory I vividly recall happened in 1956. It was a few days before Christmas and Uncle Jim, my Aunt Jodi and Mama Ida had come from North Carolina to spend Christmas at our house in Lewisburg, WV. With an hour or two of sunlight remaining, I asked my uncle  if he wanted to take the dogs out and … [Read more...]

  The Pent-ultimate Christmas present for every Boomer boy was a Lionel train. And so it was with me. I was seven and a Lionel train was at the top of my wish list to Santa Claus. I simply had to have one, even though they were fairly pricey and my dad earned only a modest salary as an FBI agent. By boyhood friend, Billy Richmond, got a train for Christmas the year before. Billy was … [Read more...]

  I don’t eat a lot of cereal. I’m more of a sausage and egg kinda-guy, but I used to eat a lot of cereal. All Boomer kids did. After all, if you didn’t eat cereal how were you going to get any of those neat prizes? I read that Cracker Jacks recently discontinued putting premiums in their boxes, signaling the end of an era, an era of reaching to the very bottom of a new box of cereal to … [Read more...]

  About 25 years ago, I got a call from Neil Selby up in Remington. “Can you be up here about 5 tomorrow morning? We’ve got geese and lots of them.” Neil, a long-time friend, owns Shady Grove Kennels, a hunting preserve. Neil also is a master dog trainer. “Sure,” I replied. “See you at 5 AM.” It happened to be on a Monday in early February and I remembered I had not bought a … [Read more...]

  I was a little edgy the last time I boarded a helicopter. It was a chopper in Kauai on our last cruise. But this time I was excited to hop into the 6-passenger aircraft. The most spectacular views of Hawaii, I have discovered, come from the air. Our pilot spun us around and headed for the lava fields. We were in Hilo on the east side of the Big Island of Hawaii, the site of the 2018 … [Read more...]

  February 1, 1967 was an exciting day. I had packed my Camaro convertible with a few pots and pans, some linens, my guitar and stereo and headed to Charlottesville, my new home. It was a beautiful day, in the low 80’s and I put the top down on my drive over. This Virginia is a special kind of place, I thought. Two weeks later it snowed 16-inches, but on that first day of February, all was … [Read more...]