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511th Airborne Infantry Regiment
Here’s an old photo of my dad in his graduating Airborne class. It was made in 1950 at Camp Campbell, KY. I am trying to find someone who might have a better copy, as mine is damaged. Please let me know if you have a relative who was in the class.
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Managing Expectations
I tell my wife and daughters all the time to manage their expectations. Whether it’s a new job, new boyfriend, new car, fast food, new conspiracy theory, or new Girl Scout cookie flavors, manage your expectations. You get the picture. I recommend managing expectations about pretty much everything in life. Don’t have unrealistic expectations (positive or negative) of anybody or any place or anything. Don’t believe that Wendy’s commercial about their food. Here’s why: Once, I accepted a new job in East Tennessee. Now, East Tennessee is beautiful and sometimes I miss living there. I even learned how to speak a little Tennessean during my time there. But I grew…
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Invasive Plants and Future
I ran across this little popcorn tree a few days ago. As strange as this may sound, I miss them. (Yes, I do know that they are an invasive species, but go with me here.) This one is growing in a field next to our apartment complex. For it to be here, there must have been another such tree nearby. Reasonably close, anyway. Maybe the wind blew a seed here. Maybe a bird thought that this field needed a new Chinese Tallow tree. Maybe the rain, I don’t know. I miss them because, on our little half-acre lot in southwest Alabama, we had three such trees. All of them, to…
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Learning to Read
When they married in 1903 in Alabama, my paternal grandfather (Ollie Manning) could not read. I am sure this was common in this area of Alabama in the early twentieth century, and it was probably common to many people at the time. My grandfather was a carpenter, so he could work and earn a living. My grandmother (Mary Jones) decided that she would teach him to read. And she did. When they married, she was about 15 years old, and he was about 26. The picture below shows them on their wedding day. She was a little over 5 feet tall, and he was over six. I am not sure…
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Mustache of Shame
Photo by Shivam Singh on Unsplash I was a grown man before I decided to shave off that awful mustache. And, I’ve never looked back. The impetus for change? A girl. A stunning and multi-lingual college-age Russian who was a part of a group of other college girls assigned as translators for a motley crew of Americans in northern Russia. Here’s how I fell for her: I looked at her. No, really. I looked at her and said, “hello.” She returned the gaze. And in that brief glance of her dark crystal (technically blue) eyes, my soul was pierced. My consciousness emptied of the ability to think rational thoughts. And I…
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The Pinecone Kicker
Short Fiction Greer never gave up on his dream, although his body had reservations Greer Davidson took a light and guarded step, planted his foot onto the football field, shifted his weight, and swung his right leg toward an object perched in the grass in front of him. Eighty-thousand fans stopped screaming and, for the moment, breathing, while Greer readied to kick a football through the yellow uprights at the back of the end zone at Legion Field, sealing the victory for his beloved Alabama Crimson Tide. A stoic-faced Coach “Bear” Bryant — his face was always stoic — stood frozen on the sidelines with a look of “Boy, you better not miss this”…
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Check your water source
Everyone needs clean water. And we all expect to get clean water, especially if you are a soldier and approach a “water buffalo” that has the word “potable” clearly stamped on the side. (A water buffalo is just a big portable metal tank with clean drinking water.) Usually. They give soldiers and Boy Scouts (or anyone really) access to clean water out in the middle of nowhere. But someone has to clean it out occasionally and refill it and transport it back to the middle of nowhere. So, once upon a time an Army captain and his soldiers were out in the middle of Camp Shelby, Mississippi. They’d been walking…
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Lame Claim to Fame
To successfully navigate the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous, one must have a sponsor to steer the drunk from continuing on his or her destructive path. My dad had just such a sponsor. He is the guy in the photo (below). I’ve listened to my dad, through smoke-filled rooms, give testimony to his life with and without alcohol. I preferred without. Thankfully, he did too. After sitting through more than a few AA meetings, I’m convinced that all alcoholics really just trade the alcohol for coffee and cigarettes. In our little town in South Alabama, there was a house on the banks of a small river. In this house, converted…
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A Beginner’s Guide to Locking your Keys in your Car
I’m near Columbus, Mississippi auditioning for a preaching job. I stop at a gas station just a mile or so from the church building where the audition was to occur. You may be surprised to hear the word “audition” associated with interviewing for a preaching job. My experience is that folks are interested in hiring you only if you sound good not if, you know, you are concerned for ministering to people. But I digress. It was winter and cold, even for Mississippi. I got out of the truck, spun around, and the door shut. This was not part of the audition. A feeling somewhere down in the far reaches…
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The Blaming Game Starter Pack
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash I am probably five or six years old. I’m sitting at a table with other preschool kids. The teacher is Mrs. Payne and it’s almost time for the bell to ring and dismiss a hoard of wild little kids to trample anything on their way to the school buses. Mrs. Payne is going on about something. By my right foot, I see a piece of lead, which had broken off from a pencil. Maybe it was my pencil. Maybe it was someone else’s pencil. Does it really matter? It could have been Philip, a little guy that I’d probably just met that day sitting right…
