Our little piece of the Pine Curtain recently experienced a semi-snow day. A mild ice storm earlier this week prompted the administration to close the college campus at 3 p.m., cancel night classes and delay opening the next day until 10 a.m.
I reckon, at least looking at the 10-day forecast, this is as close as I will get to reliving the childhood indulgence of a snow day.
This winter I have jealously observed as cities to the south and west — places where I used to live, such as Lufkin, Nacogdoches and even normally arid Austin — have been whacked with winter storms that closed schools...
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Identify theft is a hot topic lately, with cyber crooks swiping millions of credit card numbers from Target and other retail outlets. Certainly one can’t be too careful when most of us conduct much of our business online, relying on passwords to access bank accounts, credit cards and even Netflix. I am quite cautious, using several passwords and never having the same one for, say, the bank account and my email. I have a mental image of this army of unshaven weasels hiding in dark rooms, hunched over screens trying to break into my account so they can run up a tab with amazon.com and cost me untold...
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I bought my first Pete Seeger album in 1971, when I was 16, most likely at the Howard’s store on Mobberly Avenue in Longview. That is where I bought most of my records as a teen, in this discount store that was precursor and later victim to Walmart. From our house on South Twelfth Street it was an easy hike through the Letourneau University campus to the store, where I would flip through the record bin to spend some of my paycheck from the Longview News-Journal. I had recently been promoted to part-time photographer. I don’t recall that meant a raise in pay, but it did increase my hours.
I...
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For years I’ve been collecting snatches of conversations I’ve overheard here Behind the Pine Curtain, phrases and expressions that mark this place as somewhere unique. Sometimes I think the language is all that is left to distinguish one region from another in this age of commercial homogeneity. One can be plopped down in a shopping district of a mid-sized town in Iowa, Georgia, Texas or Colorado, and — except for the weather and the accent — not notice any difference. You will see a Home Depot or Lowe’s, a Target, Wal-Mart, a smattering of food chains, a dozen or so clothing franchises,...
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A recent New York Times article recounted how a group of elderly Korean men are getting grief from McDonald’s management at a store in Queens, New York because they spend too much time there socializing while spending hardly any money. They might shell out $1.39 for a small order of fries to split among them, but mainly they are there to gab and presumably get away from their spouses. Now that might be an stereotype, but there must be a reason these men are willing to risk having the police called on them to overstay their welcome at a Mickey D’s.
Old men — and women — socializing at a McDonald’s...
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DALLAS — Inside the NorthPark Center is a sculpture titled Fountainhead. Images of folding currency stream down the sides, an endless river of money descending in two-dimensional form. The sculpture resembles a smaller version of one of those fake rock walls one can pay to climb, often in malls such as NorthPark. The purpose of this sculpture, I later read, is to encourage people to donate money to worthy causes. That was not immediately obvious. I figured it was an altar to spending, which seemed fitting. That is what the hordes of folks crowding this place the weekend after New Year’s were...
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Working at the car wash
Working at the car wash, yeah
Come on and sing it with me, car wash
Sing it with the feeling now, car wash yeah
— Rose Royce
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That banal disco song runs through my skull each time I head to the self-service dog wash I recently discovered, with a smelly pooch riding shotgun and looking concerned. Especially if it is Rosie, who hates traveling and pants so incessantly that she leaves drool all over the seat. Rosie is possibly part Yorkie, certainly part Nervous Nellie. She does not like change of routine and equates a car ride with being boarded or suffering...
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Working at the car wash
Working at the car wash, yeah
Come on and sing it with me, car wash
Sing it with the feeling now, car wash yeah
— Rose Royce
|———|
That banal disco song runs through my skull each time I head to the self-service dog wash I recently discovered, with a smelly pooch riding shotgun and looking concerned. Especially if it is Rosie, who hates traveling and pants so incessantly that she leaves drool all over the seat. Rosie is possibly part Yorkie, certainly part Nervous Nellie. She does not like change of routine and equates a car ride with being boarded or suffering...
Read more...
I was talking to a nephew the other day. We were comparing notes about the first time we put on glasses and saw the world in it all its beauty. Both of us were about the same age — 8 years old. For me, that means a half-century of wearing spectacles. Without them, I am at the mercy of errant barbers who take off my glasses before the trim and then ask me what do I think about the results. How would I know? Children can make funny faces at me with aplomb. In fact, pretty much anything much beyond arm’s length is a blur without glasses.
Years ago, I read “The River of Doubt,” a nonfiction...
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The winter solstice approaches. The shortest day of the year arrives on Saturday, followed by the longest night. Forecasters predict severe thunderstorms and lots of rain that day as a cold front moves through, and winter returns after a slow warming trend. Last weekend we had a fire blazing nearly nonstop, our family gathered around it. This morning I worked up a slight sweat while walking Sam the Dog along the Boorman Trail.
The trail has taken a beating this fall, flooding leaving a layer of mud left splayed on the concrete during the autumn gullywashers. City workers do a good job getting...
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