Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain...

​ Memories pop into my head when I least expect it. I have thousands of key words that will pull a joke or memory kicking and screaming from the deepest depths of my mind.       My sister, Lisa Sutton Eckelbarger, commented on one of my posts that I don’t write about her. Well, sis, this one is for you.       In 1983, my sister was a big fan of the cartoon series Shirt Tales. The Shirt Tales were talking animal crime fighters. The messages on their shirts changed to reflect their thoughts.       Hardee’s was offering a set of five stuffed shirt tales by selling one a week with a kid’s meal. My mom and dad forced me to eat there every Thursday for five weeks. It was cruel and unusual punishment. I could eat more than that.       When I collected all five, they decided it would be for Christmas. I don’t know where mom hid them, but I told her to let me handle wrapping them. I wrapped a dozen boxes inside of each other.      When Christmas Day arrived, she picked up the box and tore it fr

​      There are moments in television that no one will ever forget. When they finally told us that Kristin Shepard shot JR was a big one. The last episode of M.A.S.H. was another.       We lived for the cliffhanger episodes that were very common in the seventies and eighties. The great revelation was standard practice near the beginning of the next season.       I remember many of these moments, but there are two that I’ll never forget. They were very important to me. I could identify with them.       A big part of my morning routine was the Janie show. Janie Woods Hodge was the star of the show. It was a variety show in which she sang, visited with children, and played cartoons.       Each morning she would show drawings that were sent in by viewers. Why do I remember this so vividly that I can see a white house with green grass, a tree, the sun above it, and a bird in the sky?  The name Charley Sutton was scrawled in the handwriting of a seven year old.       In the years before Fac

​         I looked in the mirror this morning and wondered what happened to the young guy that once starred back at me. The guy standing there looking at me resembled him, but he looked like life had beat him up a bit.        How has changed?     Some of his heroes have changed. The man in the mirror still reads a Stephen King novel once in a while, but there are a few books from Mr. King that he’s never read. His interests haven’t changed much. He still enjoys science fiction and fantasy, but now he’ll read action and adventure as well as non-fiction. He still reads the Bible but with a little more understanding of what it means to him now.          Some of the movie heroes he enjoyed have passed away or past their prime. Now, he’ll watch a good mystery, science fiction story, or an interesting documentary. The names of the stars don’t stick in his head like they used to. He knows Harrison Ford, John Wayne, and Tommy Lee Jones, but couldn’t tell you who was in the movie he watched yes

    I was flipping through Netflix yesterday and saw a documentary about what it takes to make a cruise happen.  It was very interesting.  Alot of people work twelve-hour days to make sure we have a good time on the cruise.  Food, entertainment, and cleaning require tons of time and effort to pull off a successful cruise.        I've been on two cruises.  Both have been on Princess Cruise Lines.  I was actually surprised how the price of a cruise compared to a vacation here in the United States.  Don't get me wrong about the United States.  I've on plenty of weekend and weeklong vacations here. I've also been to Cancun twice.  Again, comparable to a vacation here in the States.     The documentary got me thinking about our first trip to Cancun.  Somewhere in the documentary, they showed the image of a crocodile.  We'd been in Cancun for four days, and my daughter was six at the time.  She wanted food she was used to.  We took a bus ride to McDonald's on the stri

​I can’t sing or play, but I sing anyway. 

        Jake sat in bed with his blanket tucked under his chin.  “Mom,” he called in a voice just above a whisper.  There was no answer other those coming from beneath the bed.  Clicks and squeaks that filled him with dread.      His older brother Robert had told him about what happened to the last six-year-old who had heard the monster under the bed.  They had found nothing but one shoe.  The boy was gone.  No signs of struggle, no signs of foul play, nothing but one red sneaker.      A very loud creak from under the bed was just too much.  “MOM!”  He screamed with all his might.  A light came on in the hallway, and the comforting sound his mom coming down the hall to save him from the monster that tormented him every night made him relax his grip on the blanket.  As she walked in the door, he stood and launched himself into her arms almost knocking her down.      “ Mommy, it’s under my bed,” Jake told her.      “ Honey, we’ve been over this many times.  There’s nothing under you

 I wrote this little burb when President Obama was in office.  I wondered what would happen if our society was destroyed, and the only thing that was available to rebuild it was a collection of DVDs found in a government building somewhere.  This is what happened in my head.      The man behind the podium shuffled through a small pile of index cards. When he seemed satisfied, he placed them on the podium and began to speak.      “I stand before you today humbled by your faith in me. To allow me to lead you has been a great honor, and one that I do not take lightly. This is likely to be the last time I address this great nation though no one alive at this time will ever here my words. This is for generations to come if there are any.”      “I have a story to tell,” he continued. “It’s not just about me. It’s about the human condition. The trials and tribulations we have faced on this ball of water hurtling through the universe. I really don’t have any answers to age old

​      Call me Ishmael. Well not really. My name’s Fred, but someone once said that was a good way to start a story. Yeah, I know its plagiarism, but give me a break. I’m not exactly the sharpest tack in the box. What do you expect from a dog? Yeah, that’s right. I’m a dog, a German Sheppard actually. Funny thing is I don’t speak German. Come to think of it, I don’t speak at all.        So, now you’re probably wondering how I’m telling you this story. Well, that’s the magic of ink and paper. I can do anything and call it creative license. Besides, the story I’m about to tell you is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent, but nobody’s innocent! The only name I’m going to change is mine. What kind of a cruel person names a dog Fred? I’ll tell you who: Jonah R. Trundle, that’s who. He thought some song about a guy named Fred was funny, and so here I am. Fred the dog, but you can call me William. Yeah, I like William. It’s a good strong name. Say it with me: William.

      There were always visitors at grandma and grandpa’s house. If you spent a week there in  the late seventies, you’d see just about every relative you knew and probably one or two you didn’t.      One thing you were guaranteed to see was animals. Chickens, rabbits, pigs were not uncommon, but my favorite animal was a dog named Brutus.      He was actually my cousin’s dog. They lived right next door, and so he spent a lot of his time at grandpa and grandma’s house.      Grandpa’s back door never latched. To keep the door from blowing open, he nailed a small scrap of leather to the door frame. It snugged the door just enough to keep it closed, but not enough to make it hard to open.       Brutus was a bit of a loner. He’d come to the back door and bark to get in and bark to get out. Somehow Brutus figured out that if he hit the back door hard enough it would open. He still had to bark to get out, he always let himself in. The best part for him was not waiting for one of us

     The pandemic has been hard on the food industry.  Mom and pop restaurants had to close or follow a takeout order only rule. Many private restaurants couldn’t handle the cost of being closed and stayed that way.       The drive through restaurants with lobbies kept the drive throughs open and closed the lobbies during the pandemic. What most of them found out was they made more money with less people. I rarely sat inside fast food restaurants with lobbies and drive through windows, but I did at Steak-n-Shake. I like their food.       I’d missed sit down meals a lot over the past two years. I’ve been to several mom and pop’s restaurants to eat since they opened back up. I’ve visited Red Lobster, Bob Evans, Texas Road House, and Cracker Barrel.  I’ve tipped all the wait staff well, because they have dealt with food shortages, diminished menus, and less customers than before this all happened    ​    Today I ate inside the lobby of Steak-n-Shake for the first time since the pandemic s

​       My grandpa and grandma always had three big garden plots. One was strictly potatoes, one was tomatoes, and the last one was green beans and a mixture of whatever odds and ends grandpa decided to try.      Canning was a big event when the tomatoes and green beans were ready, but the biggest crop was potatoes. We all had jobs when it was time to harvest potatoes. The adults dug them up with potato forks and put the biggest of the potatoes into baskets that would be deposited into the root cellar/storm shelter/cave. (That’s a whole different story on it’s own.)       That left the grandkids to gather the small baby potatoes from the dirt and the vines. If the job was done right, there’d be dirt under our nails, on our hands and faces, and our knees as we crawled from hole to hole, plucking taters from the roots of the plants, sifting through the dirt, and filling the holes.          But that was the end of the growing season. What I remember most is crawling through the garden and

​ New technology scares people sometimes. My grandpa told me a story about his dad Charles Marion Townsend also known as Jonas. Jonas had a fear of talking in front of the TV.   In our technology drenched existence, we have to worry about credit scores, passwords, and PIN numbers being stolen. We can’t keep the passwords on a card in our wallet or purse. That’s where the credit cards are. The camera on you computer can be turned on remotely. You have to keep on step ahead of criminals these days by changing passwords often.  We’ve also been warned about using the same password more than once. The information highway has a lot of bandits waiting in the shadows. They could steal you account information and ruin you financially.  But my great grandpa was weary of technology for another reason. It was in the sixties, and television was still relatively new to most homes.   Jonas had spent most of his life without a television set. He was from the radio generation and probably listened to G

My mom is one of the nicest people I know. She doesn’t understand that gruff, no nonsense, don’t mess with me attitude that I inherited from my dad. I am honest to the point of being brutally honest. I know what kind of man I am, and I am not bothered by what people think of me. My dad has been picking on me, teasing me, and laughing at me since I started talking. No it wasn’t abusive. It was a process. That process armored me against insults and threats. Only a handful of people can hurt my feelings. All of them share my last name.  My mom is always ready to share her love. At one point or another she’s baked a birthday cake for everyone she calls friend or family. It was my mom that sat with me and watched scary movies and TV shows when I was young.  She took me to see Conan the Barbarian at the Eastwood Cinema even though it didn’t interest her.  A few year’s back I saw “Kolchak: the Night Stalker” at Walmart and had to buy it. I watched every episode for a second time and drifted b

       I must have been in my early teens. I know wasn’t old enough to drive. Grandpa was splitting wood. I walked up and watched for a minute.      “ Can I try, Grandpa?” I asked.      “ It’s harder than it looks, Charley,” he replied.      He handed me a double bit axe, set a small piece of wood on the ground.      “ Hit it right here,” he said as he pointed at the center of the log.      I raised the axe over my head, took careful aim, and put every ounce of energy I had into the swing. The axe sliced down through the air and hit the wood with a solid thunk. If I were a cartoon character, the thunk would have been followed by a boing since the blade missed completely. It was the handle that made that solid thunk as the shockwave traveled up my arms, to my shoulders, and jarred my very soul.      I looked at grandpa sheepishly and he laughed at me.      “ Don’t worry about it,” he said taking the axe. He pointed at the duct tape wrapped around the handle below t

Sometimes, I hear my thoughts as voices. I’ve written a lot about my grandpa Townsend. His voice is prominent in my mind. I can hear my sister, my mom, and my dad in my memories. The ones that I spent the most time with growing up are very strong. My wife’s voice is probably the strongest. I’ve spent more time with her than any of the others since we’ve been married for almost 33 years and been a couple for almost 36. There is one voice that doesn’t exist in my head. My grandpa Sutton’s voice was silenced many years before I showed up. He was born in 1895 and I was born in 1968. If he had lived to see my birth, he would have been 73 years old. Unfortunately, he died of complications from medicines he was taking in 1953. When my grandma Sutton passed away, we opened my grandpa Sutton’s footlocker that had a small snapshot of his life in it. From his belongings I have a pipe wrench that he used at The Stokley’s plant that was on Harrison street just off of 19. I have his wool bathing sui