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

​ My family didn’t vacation much when I was a kid. We went to Michigan when I was around four and Kentucky when I was twelve. The rest of our trips were in Indiana.       Many Saturdays in my youth were spent in the back seat of our parent’s car, staring at the back of mom and dad’s head. This was before the Walkman, tablets, and cell phones.      I spent some of the time reading a book. I would hazard a guess that it was either a Conan novel or a story by Stephen King. My sister probably was reading “Old Hat, New Hat” or maybe something by Dr. Seuss.       I remember going to a fish market In Indianapolis. My dad bought some smoked fish that he used to buy when he was stationed in Thailand. That’s another smell I won’t forget.       My sister, Lisa Sutton Eckelbarger, had a scale on which she judged every town we visited. They were only worth visiting if they had a Kmart and a McDonald’s. It couldn’t be a Kmart or a McDonald’s. It had to be both. If they didn’t have both, we wasted th

​ The weirdest thing about memories is how they smell. A smell can bring back some of your deepest seemingly forgotten memories.       I was in Walmart and walked though the produce section.  I stopped at the melons because one of them must have been on the verge of going bad. The strong scent slapped me all the way back to the early seventies.        I was still in Walmart physically, but I was mentally four years old and in Kroger’s when it was in the Broadway Plaza. I could see the RC cola in the basket of the cart above my head. My shoes aren’t the work boots I now wear every day. I’m wearing Buster Brown’s with one inch heels. I can’t see much else besides my green jeans, the white and chrome fronts of the coolers, and all the cracks in the white tile that threaten to break my momma’s back.       Ignoring the danger, she pushes on towards the canned goods. Spread along the way are toys and candy at eye level. Toy cars and boats hanging on strips of plastic catch my eye. It is prob

​        When I was a kid, eating at a restaurant was a treat. I can remember when my favorite meal was a from Mr. Weenie’s. Dad would ask what we wanted to eat, and I’d ask for the foot long Spanish hot dog. Mom told me I didn’t need it, but dad would say you’re only a kid once and order it.          I remember Burger Chef, the Burger Barn, and Taco John’s, but we didn’t eat at those very often. I remember Mr. Weenie’s because it was an adventure. It was really the only time we ate in the car.        I remember going to the Dormitory with my neighbor and eating off of their weekly dinner menu when I was twelve. After my neighbor and I mowed a couple of the neighbor’s yards each week, we’d spend a couple of bucks for dinner at the Dorm. I can’t remember what day they served it, but the meatloaf was my favorite.        The Dorm was our first taste of the freedom of adulthood. We had a choice of what we wanted to eat at the Dorm which wasn’t something we had at home. You ate what your pa

​ One of the fun things I remember about growing up in Oakdale was the convenience stores and gas stations. Gross’s and B, J, & T were the last two. Another thing was the scrap yard over by the Square D.        Until I got old enough to mow, the scrap yard was how we earned money. At first it was copper wire, because pop cans were still made of steel. We scoured the neighborhood looking for copper tubing and wire out by trash cans.       We’d take our haul to the scrap yard and get a buck or two if we were lucky. Sometimes, I think people put that stuff by the trash cans for us to find. Sometimes we found three or four dollars worth. I don’t think anyone would throw that much copper away back then. The early seventies was rough for a lot of people.       With our cash in our pockets, we’d pick one of the stores and buy a coke, gum, and candy.       What brought all this back to me was drinking a cup of coffee from a B.C. coffee mug my mom gave me. I vaguely remember getting them at

​ It’s a bit strange to realize I’ve been on this planet for over half a century. Along the way I’ve learned things from my wife, my parents, my extended family, and my friends. My mistakes have guided me from time to time as I meet new challenges. Some things my children have taught me with patience being one of those lessons.   Sometimes my patience wears thin. Here’s something you should know. After that half a century, I’ve become set in my ways and confident in my abilities. If I haven’t asked your opinion about some aspect of my life in that first fifty years, it’s a pretty safe bet that I never will. While everyone’s opinion is important, my opinion is first and foremost the one that I will take to heart.   At this point in the game I only answer to my wife and God. Some people should be very happy that she is around to keep my temper in check. Without her, I’d probably have a judge or two whose opinion would have been very important over the years.  I Love you, Lori. Don’t ever

​ I didn’t spend a lot of time with my aunt Margaret Gebhart growing up. When i learned to drive, a visited her a couple of times a month. She’d tell me stories about my grandpa that my dad was too young to remember.        One afternoon, she brought a picture of my grandpa Charles Otho Sutton down from upstairs. It was taken in 1917 along with a picture of his first wife. They were taken just before he left for France and the war to end all wars.        I don’t know much about his first wife other than her name was Maude. What I do know is she had found another man while my grandpa was in the trenches. I guess it was a common occurrence and still is. He divorced her and married my grandma Ethel Hight.       The two pictures of him and his first wife in the plaster frames with bubbled glass hung on either side of the living room door even after he married my grandma. I don’t know why he wouldn’t take her picture down, but my aunt remembered his refusal to remove her picture from the li

​         I’ve been a tool nut for a long time.     I think Lori picks job that requires me to buy a tool because she knows it will get done faster.          I went into Sears many years ago and saw a new set of sockets called pass through sockets made by Gearwrench. This set of sockets were open in the middle which eliminates the need for deep well sockets. You just slip the socket over the bolt and put it on the nut.         They were expensive at $95.00, but I needed them.    Okay, I’d need them at some point in the future. I did need them soon after and thousands of times since then.          My brother-in-law needed some metric sockets to work on a car he was selling.    I took my pass through set to him. The guy that bought the car had picked it up when I went to pick up my sockets.          When I got there, he gave me the bad news. My 10 millimeter pass through socket had fallen down in the motor and disappeared as 10 mm sockets tend to do.          I went to Sears to see if th

​        My family and I took a Caribbean cruise just before the pandemic hit. We drove to New Orleans to meet our ship.          We got a little sidetracked by the map built into our SUV. It hadn’t been updated in a couple of years. When the cursor showed us driving through a field, I switched to my Google maps app on my phone.         Now that we were lost in a rain storm, the shortest route to our hotel was a line of paved horse paths barely wide enough for one car to pass. Add thunder, lightning, and no streetlights to complete the horror movie ambience.         Have you ever ridden a roller coaster?    The scariest ones take you up a hill and suddenly drops you at a steep angle giving you the illusion of falling.    Imagine that same effect on a road.         I climbed a hill and turned left at the very top. The road disappeared as we came down the hill at 40 degrees almost immediately after turning. It would not have been so bad had I not been blinded by a lightning strike just a