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There are three things I consider each morning when saddling up. Is it cold? Is it wet? Is it dark? You bet! Oh I can do a combination of two, But never all three at once. There is a triangle of conditions I consider each morning before I decide to cycle: cold, wet, and dark. I can do a combination of two, but not all three. I am also reluctant to ride in the midday sun at the height of…

When was the last time that you really had fun at work?  I haven’t always enjoyed work. Sometimes I wonder if that makes me lazy. There have been jobs that I enjoyed more than others, but for the most part, work is not fun and doesn’t make any claims to be. And anytime I start having fun while doing work I get worried that some manager is going to barge in with an attitude and shut it down. I…

I want to be an old man one day. I want to drive a squeaky clean pickup truck to meet my friends for breakfast at Jack’s at 5:30 in the morning. I’ll eat a steak biscuit unless the bologna biscuits are on sale. We’ll sit at the round table and laugh about the good old days when gas was only .89¢ when we started driving. When a stranger walks in we’ll ask if anybody knows him. And if they don’t,…

There was a time when Hardee’s had a marketing campaign for a Monster Burger, and it worked on Dad and me. So we drove down to Childersburg, Alabama to our nearest Hardees to have one. I can remember the booth we were sitting in was near the front which gave a commanding view of the entire restaurant. You could see the counter and the kitchen beyond, as well as the dining room all the way back to…

There is a feeling that comes to me in the fall when the light is shining through the window just so, kind of sideways in the morning after all the kids are off to school. There must be a window where I can see the rest of the world, busy about their work. And there must be classical music creating a little bubble of peace. Classical music to me is not sitting in a stuffy hall in your…

I get to travel a lot for my job. So I take my camera along for drive-by photography. It seems to me that the economy in Louisiana moves East and West along I-20 and I-10. And I live in Central Louisiana. One of the recurring themes in these photographs is decaying buildings. I don’t go out of the way to find them, I have to go out of my why to find new construction. One of the things I like to…

Strange things have been happening to me in Louisiana. I’ll introduce myself to people and then they’ll start speaking to me in French. “Zane Wells.” “Jean-Claude Villeramerette.” People that speak French talk in italics. Aside from that, I also get point blank existential questions like when the lady at the tamale stand in Zwolle glanced at my camera and asked if I was a photographer. I…

I was reminded of the scripture where the angels heralded the birth of Jesus Christ.  And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. Luke 2:13-14 No one else in history received an angelic concert like this at birth, because no one else had ever brought peace and good will.…

Do you remember when you were in high school and the whole English class had to take turns reading Shakespeare’s Macbeth out loud? Our teacher assigned a different cast for each scene so we could all get a chance to experience public speaking anxiety. You never knew when it was your turn; you just waited in agony; your only consolation was how bad your classmates were doing. Everyone was saying…

This is my 200th article for what began in 2016 as Mostly From Memory, a blog where I started sharing short essays on my memories from growing up in a small town in Alabama. Since the statute of limitations has not run out on a few events, I am kind of out of material for the childhood stuff unless I want to run the risk of getting sued. Or I could start making stuff up. Which is how I think that…

I have been blessed with a unique opportunity to sing at the nursing home as a part of my job. I have lost count of how many nursing homes I have visited. One of the most interesting and moving experiences I have had so far is singing in the memory care units. The memory care units I have visited have been in assisted living centers, not nursing homes, and are for residents who are dealing with…

“Give me a guitar lesson Dad.” Hollynn demanded earlier this week. So I sat her on my lap and showed her the difference between a downstroke and an upstroke. We then had to back up and learn how to hold the pick. I’m not sure if there is a right way or a wrong way to hold a pick. Maybe there is just a faster or slower way. Or a more accurate way. I didn’t get into all of that, I just showed her…

I had to drive in the fog this week. I’m not talking about the kind of patchy fog you drive through while you’re crossing a bridge and then you are back in the sunshine. No. I drove for two and a half hours through the kind of fog in which Edgar Allan Poe set all of his stories. At least that’s the thick fog that I imagine when I read him. So naturally, I decided to do some drive-by photography.…

There was a wedding at church on Saturday. The kind without all the fuss of rehearsal dinners. Or rehearsals. Or the hassle of getting a hotel room. No frivolity, just a simple wedding like I remembered when I was a kid, with cake and punch in the church foyer. I really like these kind of weddings. As my family sat in the pew on the Bride’s side waiting for the wedding to start, I noticed that…

I just finished reading A Hunter’s Fireside Book: Tales of Dogs, Ducks, Birds & Guns by Gene Hill. If you were not aware, I am not a hunter, but I appreciate good writing no matter the subject-within reason of course. Good writing can make even the most boring pastime seem interesting. While I don’t necessarily think hunting boring, I do think Gene Hill was a good writer. And I really enjoyed the…

While I was working my way through college I noticed a phenomenon that happened with alarming frequency. Things that I had been taught in high school as fact were now being challenged and subjected to heavy source criticism. Post-truth: relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief. It…

I burnt off half of my yard earlier this year. Because I did not want to mow it, I allowed the brush to grow up to the point where I could not mow it. While it is not the only way to tidy up a yard, burning is perhaps the best way to begin a clean start. It is a conflicting feeling to watch the fire take over the yard. The flames will not selectively burn just the overgrown, stubborn weeds that…