If there’s one thing that always seems to be good for a chuckle, it’s looking back in the not-so-distant past at how inexpensive things used to be. The menu at the beginning of this piece was from a diner-type restaurant in Alexandria, Va., in 1938, 11 years before I was born. If the prices seem …
DINER-TYPE EATERY SHOWS HOW MUCH WE HAVE CHANGED Read More »
Do people ever really heal? Oh, I know that cuts and sores heal, and most broken bones do the same. But what about psychological wounds that are the results of things bad people do to us? I would think people need to be incredibly strong to get over those. Sadly, I’m not that strong. I …
LIFE CAN HURT, AND SOME WOUNDS NEVER REALLY HEAL Read More »
My most embarrassing moment in nearly 18 years covering sports came in 1980 at RFK Stadium in Washington. I was covering a Washington Diplomats game for a small suburban paper that no longer exists, and my sister asked me to get an autograph for her. The player was aging Dutch superstar Johann Cruyff, and even …
Anybody who thinks time doesn’t pass more quickly the older you get is simply dead wrong. It was 12 years ago this month that Nicole and I visited Pauline and her family in the mountains 40 miles east of Seattle. They are enjoying their home leave after two years in Beijing before going to Virginia …
GROWTH OF THE FORMER ‘A.B.’ SHOWS PASSAGE OF TIME Read More »
I joined Twitter nearly eight years ago. mostly to see what other people were saying. The idea of having just 140 characters — the original Twitter limit — to make a point seemed to me another step down the road to illiteracy. I remember there was a short-lived site — the name doesn’t come to …
We used to think Woodstock was a huge deal with its 400,000 people who showed up for its three-day music festival in 1969. Well, an estimated 460,000 showed up for an annual motorcycle festival last summer at a little city in western South Dakota — during a pandemic. This year, they’re expecting 700,000 bikers in …
If you could remove one thing from the world, what would it be? When I saw this question posted on Facebook, I found myself wondering about the scale of the answers. A number of people said they would remove hate, which would definitely be a good thing, although a massive undertaking. Others who didn’t go …
It was about 20 years ago that I had a wonderful tomato garden behind our home in California. I had eight plants, and in a wonderful California summer I harvested 240 tomatoes. My work schedule changed the next year and I never did the garden again until this year in Georgia. Well, either I’ve lost …
When the going gets weird … the weird turn pro. Mark and Patricia gained fame and esteem from the Trumpanzees last year when they “guarded” their suburban St. Louis home from Black Lives Matter protestors who were just walking past on the street. Their eagerness to flaunt their guns made them right-wing heroes of Donald …
“It used to be I’d go places and people would say, ‘Where are you from?’ I’d say ‘California’ and they’d be, ‘Ah gee, aren’t you lucky.’ Now it’s ridicule.” Mervin Field started polling Californians since shortly after World War II. In fact, there may not have been anyone who understood Californians better than Field, whose …
