My son Jimmie called me from Atlanta recently and said he had a weird red bird at his feeder. He finally identified it as a cardinal with a blue head. He called it a Cardinal Monster. It was not a monster at all, just a cardinal molting his feathers and occasionally cardinals will shed every feather on their heads, revealing a bright blue skin similar to a wild turkey. According to … [Read more...]

(Ed: Note:  My computer had a bad hair day last week and wouldn't connect to CvilleBuzz, so it didn't go out. Here's hoping it makes it to your in-box this week. Thx  Jim)       Well, I mowed my onions last week. Not grass, onions. I may have my best crop ever. My yard grows onions so well that I am thinking of turning it into a wild onion farm. I understand there … [Read more...]

    “Please hold. An operator will be with you shortly!” Yeah, right. And those are friendly Indians, General Custer. Next to an IRS audit, the thing I hate worse in life is having to call a utility company. I had to make such a call last week to shut off phone service as my business was changing locations. The call was to Century Link, a pillar of customer service. “If … [Read more...]

No one knows for sure what causes cataracts. It may have something to do with not eating the required 6 daily helpings of fruits and vegetables and not flossing your eyeballs twice a day. It also seems that age has something to do with developing these nasty little blobs, which can occur unannounced any time after age 50. There was once a time when I could not only read license plates on cars … [Read more...]

  On most balmy evenings before dinner, I offer wood sacrifices to the smoke gods in my now-falling-apart fire pit, an outside fireplace. Bourbon helps since my fire pit has a mind of its own. Sometimes the rusted incinerator will engulf my wood chunks in hot, blue flames while other times it spits billowing mouthfuls of smoke in my direction – no matter where I sit. It helps greatly, … [Read more...]

“Dad, let’s catch a turtle and cook it.” How well I remember those words. My 13-year old son, Jimmie, had approached me one day suggesting a turtle hunt followed by a turtle skinning and turtle cooking. It would be one of those days I would like to forget. Before braces, before three sets of college tuitions and two major weddings, my wife and I owned a neat little cottage on a private lake … [Read more...]

  A few years back, our good friends Charlotte and Dick Forrester took us on a Tacky Light Tour in their hometown, Richmond. All I can say is that those folks in RVA really do it right when it comes to Christmas decorations. But as we passed by many houses, I noted a common theme. Many had a single tree decorated that made absolutely no sense. There would be green lights on one branch and … [Read more...]

  Stuff bothers me. Like can you really get 20 clowns in a Volkswagen, and how can the radio in my car snatch invisible signals out of thin air and turn it into a song? Why does smoke from a firepit always know where I’m sitting and go that way and can woolly worms really predict cold winters or are they just guessing? That brings me to a flock of blackbirds. I saw a big ball of … [Read more...]

  Our local Department of Motor Vehicle Customer Service Center, otherwise known as the closest place to hell that you can find on this earth, will temporarily close for an interior renovation starting Oct. 31. They have some remodeling to do and think they can get back in the customer trashing and abasing business by December 6. DMV suggests that those who may need their services go … [Read more...]

Everybody has a favorite poem. Poetry is one of those artforms that can express intense feeling and emotions. It can be like an inspirational painting. Frost, Dickinson, Whitman, Eliot, Kipling, Emerson – great poets, one and all. My favorite poem was written by a fellow named Rufus Jones. It brings tears to my eyes when I recite it. It goes like this: It was a cold and wintry night A man … [Read more...]