Words To Live By

Whenever I'm asked how retirement is going, my response may elicit a quizzical look.

"Well, it's great! We're actually getting to travel quite a bit. You'd be surprised at how daily trips to the cancer center in downtown Houston rack up the miles. We eat out a lot, too. The hospital has nice cafeterias, and I [...]

Some I willingly released. Others I lost… or they simply disappeared. And time and circumstance ripped away a significant few by force. But here's the commonality: I wish I still had them all.

Consider my first car, a 1964 Impala Super Sport we called Red Dragon. On the serpentine Pig Trail between Ozark and Fayetteville, I [...]

Thomas Edison observed, “To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.” And junk helped fuel the imagination of my youth.
Back then, an omnivorous burning barrel in our backyard consumed much household waste. More trash disappeared weekly as the garbage truck made its rounds to empty the silver cans parked at curbside. [...]

“Launch your career as a locksmith with our home study training course!” Thus read typical back-of-the-magazine ads in late 1950s. And the promise of a free set of tools–even for lockpicking!–pulled almost irresistibly. But I had neither nerve nor money to follow through.

But while fiddling to install a new set of deadbolt locks the other [...]

In 1955 when I was nine, Daddy decided to teach me how country people earned money after the Great Depression. Our lessons came mostly on cold winter nights.

When Daddy graduated from Hector High School in 1933, times were so lean that he didn't have money for a class ring. So assisted at times by younger [...]

Populate 37 blank pages with meaningful notations before Christmas morning. That's the one present my wife requested, so it had to be done.

Here are her specific instructions: "This homemade ABC book is for you to fill out about our lives. You can go any direction you want: childhood memories, our engagement, early marriage, friends, children, [...]

Except for weddings or funerals or speaking engagements, I seldom wear a suit.

When I first hired on with Texas Instruments in Dallas in 1968, a formal "no suit" policy distinguished them from many other employers. Wearing a flashy Hawaiian shirt as proof, TI vice president A. Ray McCord indoctrinated us new hires about how no [...]

I still see Old Smiley in my mind's eye, snuffling fallen leaves in search of animal trails. Finding none, she trots eagerly ahead until my whistle beckons her back. Recovering from a broken foot and unable to keep up, I creep tentatively, leaning heavily on my hiking stick.

A dozen years ago, Old Smiley, Barrett, Patrick [...]