Humor – Mostly From Memory

Old Men

I want to be an old man one day. I want to drive a squeaky clean pickup truck to meet my friends for breakfast at Jack’s at 5:30 in the morning. I’ll eat a steak biscuit unless the bologna biscuits are on sale. We’ll sit at the round table and laugh about the good old days when gas was only .89¢ when we started driving. When a stranger walks in we’ll ask if anybody knows him. And if they don’t, we’ll get to know him. We’ll have nicknames for all the little kids because we might not remember their real names. That will endear them to us. After breakfast we will piddle in our gardens, or go horse trade old guitars and guns.

I met a man yesterday who was 98 years old. He drove himself to the Council on Aging. I’m not sure if he came to hear me sing, or if he just came out of habit because old men have routines. But he stayed and talked to me in the atmosphere that lingers after the songs are over but everyone remains quiet, intently listening. He was still sharp in his mind. That’s the kind of old man I want to be.

I met another old man that cycled 100 miles when he turned 90. A spry old sinewy man, tough as woodpecker lips-that is the kind of thing that old men say. I hope to be a fit old man. Not the kind that wears shorts so everyone has to look their old nasty bird legs. There are some things in life a man ought not have to look at.

I want to be an old man that can tell a good story. Can’t nobody tell a story like an old man. And I might start carrying around little candies to hand out at church for children in case my eyebrows scare them.

I just lost one of my favorite old men, Bro. Boney. I wasn’t expecting it, and I’m still not over it. He was one the kind of old men that shook everyone’s hand at the church. He did that with purpose. He had a way of making people feel like they belonged there. He’d been coming to Thanksgiving with my family for the past few years. He’d sing snatches of those old hymns and I’d accompany on the guitar in the corner until our wives would calm us down. One year the power went out, so we couldn’t be ignored. Everyone joined in and sang along. It was a good night.

One year he brought a BB Gun to the church while we cooked a bunch of turkey breasts for Thanksgiving. It was something that you would expect an 8 year old boy to do, but there he was, the oldest man present, plinking away at cans. I just thought that was hilarious. I kept this picture as his contact picture on my phone. I always have the hardest time deleting contacts of friends that have died.

The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness. Proverbs 16:31

Old men are a blessing, otherwise God would not have cursed the house of Eli by denying them old men.

Wherefore the Lord God of Israel saith, I said indeed that thy house, and the house of thy father, should walk before me for ever: but now the Lord saith, Be it far from me; for them that honour me I will honour, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed. Behold, the days come, that I will cut off thine arm, and the arm of thy father’s house, that there shall not be an old man in thine house. And thou shalt see an enemy in my habitation, in all the wealth which God shall give Israel: and there shall not be an old man in thine house for ever. And the man of thine, whom I shall not cut off from mine altar, shall be to consume thine eyes, and to grieve thine heart: and all the increase of thine house shall die in the flower of their age. I Samuel 2:30-33

I want to be the kind of old man that young men want to get next to in the prayer room before church. The kind of old man that makes children laugh. That gives good gifts. That speaks the truth in love. That cares. That loves the same woman for decades and raises godly children.

I guess the best way to be the kind of old man you want to be is to be the kind of young man you ought to be.

Is ‘at You Earl?

There was a time when Hardee’s had a marketing campaign for a Monster Burger, and it worked on Dad and me. So we drove down to Childersburg, Alabama to our nearest Hardees to have one. I can remember the booth we were sitting in was near the front which gave a commanding view of the entire restaurant. You could see the counter and the kitchen beyond, as well as the dining room all the way back to the bathroom. As we set there eating our big old cheeseburgers, and just generally enjoying our fine dining experience, the side door opened. A voice from the kitchen called out: “Is ‘at you Earl?”

It was Earl, a slovenly dark-haired young man reporting for duty. He confirmed this with a mumbled reply. Then braced himself as a volley of admonishments was hurled his way. It was a woman’s voice, clearly his manager. She was not berating as I recall, but smooth and comical. It seemed like she had been working on Earl for a while.

Where you been Earl? Tuck your shirt in Earl. Did you wash your hands Earl? Where is your Apron Earl? You didn’t comb your hair Earl? Go to the bathroom and get yourself together. Be somebody Earl.

Earl was having a rough day. Being audience to this scene brought an immense amount of joy to my Dad.

“Poor Earl just ain’t got it together does he?”

He recalled this episode for nearly the rest of his life. “Is ‘at you Earl?” became something that he would say to me from then on.

My Dad wanted us to have the experience of working with the general public. Principally, so we would know how to treat people. And to know how to behave when you have been mistreated. Maybe that manager was the first person that ever took time to try to help Earl.

I always think about Earl when I see a Hardee’s. I think about a high school teenager getting their first experience in the workforce. Maybe for the first time in their life they are having do things that were never taught at home. Like tucking their shirt. And being somebody.

Photos of The Week: September 27th, 2025

These are the photographs I took this week.

I get to travel a lot for my job. So I take my camera along for drive-by photography. It seems to me that the economy in Louisiana moves East and West along I-20 and I-10. And I live in Central Louisiana. One of the recurring themes in these photographs is decaying buildings. I don’t go out of the way to find them, I have to go out of my why to find new construction. One of the things I like to imagine is what these buildings were like in their prime, with people bustling in an out of them. What kind of clothes did they wear? How did they talk? What did they eat for lunch?

I imagine this was once a thriving little grocery store. The painting makes the pain worse for me: It is fake.

I thought this man was interesting. He was shuffling material from one medical building to another across the street.

The crack in my windshield somehow makes this picture better. The kind of obscure photograph that you imagine a special agent gets on those old detective radio shows.

“These cars always reminded me of fighter planes.” That’s what the man driving one told me once at a gas station 20 years ago. His was green though.

I wonder what kind of art is produced here. I like that old chair.

Something about the colors on this building speaks to me.

It was exhilarating being this close to a train.

This is probably my favorite picture from this week. I love this time of the morning. I imagine this is a scene from a book that you can’t put down.

I love these little lizards. Anything that eats bugs can hang around my house.

Name the title of the book that this could be the dust jacket for. That’s the kind of thing I think about when I am composing a shot.

Another good cover for a book about a haunted house.

Are You A Photographer? And Other Existential Questions

I don’t really want to be defined simply by what I like to do.

Strange things have been happening to me in Louisiana. I’ll introduce myself to people and then they’ll start speaking to me in French.

“Zane Wells.”

“Jean-Claude Villeramerette.”

People that speak French talk in italics.

Aside from that, I also get point blank existential questions like when the lady at the tamale stand in Zwolle glanced at my camera and asked if I was a photographer.

I said, “Well kind of, but I’m more of a writer.”

When she found out I was a writer the whole kitchen wanted me to take their picture with their blue ribbon. I obliged. I think it was a good enough picture. But I’m not sure I am a photographer. After all, I forgot to take off the lens cap twice while I was talking to these people. That’s not the kind of thing that photographer does.

I don’t really want to be defined simply by what I like to do.

I do like like taking photographs, but I’m not sure that makes me a photographer. And I haven’t made any money taking pictures, but does making money really have a bearing on your identity? I’ve done a lot of things for money that I did not enjoy. Maybe most of the things I have done for money I did not enjoy. Then there are some things I do whether I get paid or not.

A few years ago Sarah asked Miriam what she wanted to be when she grew up. She said, “A lady with pets.”

On occasion I forget my camera as I rush out the door and it bothers me nearly all day. Those are the days that I see the most interesting compositions. Like the man demolishing a water tower with an acetylene torch in Hodge, LA. It was one of those water towers with only one central column holding the whole thing up. The kind with clean flowing lines and no sharp edges, like one of those old enameled door knobs in an ancient house. The tank was halfway gone and a shower of sparks was raining down from the lift from which the man with the torch blazed away at the thick rusty metal. I would’ve liked to have had that picture. Another time recently I saw a freshly cut hayfield and about a thousand of those pure white cattle egrets swarming around the tractor which was still laying the hay down in a neat hearing-bone pattern. Oh it was glorious! I wish you could’ve seen it. The most recent composition that I missed was also in a pasture: A longhorn bull, a donkey, and a cattle egret in congress around an ancient live oak. I imagine that these were elected officials who had met together to discuss grazing rights and what to do about the interloping deer. But I missed it and I’m not sure a thousand words could let you see it.

What I really like is story telling. And photography allows you to tell a story without any words. I only really feel like a photographer when I don’t have my camera, but I feel like a writer all of the time.

Phrasing

Maybe he meant, Young man you don’t understand how good you really got it.

Do you remember when you were in high school and the whole English class had to take turns reading Shakespeare’s Macbeth out loud? Our teacher assigned a different cast for each scene so we could all get a chance to experience public speaking anxiety. You never knew when it was your turn; you just waited in agony; your only consolation was how bad your classmates were doing. Everyone was saying the right words, but hardly anyone was really confident in their understanding of the text, despite any confidence they pretended to have in pronunciation. They were simply words without meaning: noise. It would’ve been painful to endure if we weren’t so clueless. I have a feeling that some of us thought we were doing a good job, but I don’t think anyone in my class went on to pursue an acting career. As bad as it was, I still enjoy hearing people read out loud.

I can hear us now just droning on…

Macbeth: If we should fail?

Lady Macbeth: -We fail?

But screw your courage to the sticking place

And we’ll not fail.

Now think for a minute of the old man you used to see at the grocery store—it helps if you had a job at a little grocery store while you were in high school—who had worked as a mechanic for 50 years and had to drop out of middle school to help out on the farm. He couldn’t pass an English class if his life depended on it, but it didn’t really matter; even with atrocious grammar and a vocabulary half consisting of words that could not be found in the dictionary, he could still create a sentence that would stay with you for 20 years because he knew exactly what he was talking about.

“How you doing today Mr. Wallace?”

“I’m doing fine, and you?”

“Pretty good.”

“Pretty good hard to beat.”

Pretty good hard to beat has been incorporated into my language. It may seem just like words on paper-or a screen-but it was the way he said it that let you know there was a lot more meaning that went into that sentence. Maybe he meant, Young man you don’t understand how good you really got it. I think about that old man whenever I chance to use this phrase. Whatever he may have intended, it certainly resonated with me.

That is what we call in music phrasing. Phrasing is how a musician puts a sequence of notes together into a musical thought, and how they interpret written music. It is the reason that Blues musicians could limit their musical vocabulary to the 5 note pentatonic scale and make people cry. It is why folk music can be so simple in its form, but still able to make us recall memories of places we’ve never been and times in which we never lived. And the same reason that beginner musicians sound like beginner musicians: their phrasing is off somehow. They may be playing the right notes-even reading the right notes from a master composer-but still unable to convey the real meaning of what the composer was trying to say.

The blues is feeling good about feeling bad.

Phrasing is more than having a nice voice, or tone. But I imagine that won’t hurt, but I’m not convinced it helps all the time either. It doesn’t matter how nice your voice is if you don’t have anything to say. Or if you are only going to regurgitate words that came from someone else’s heart.

It took me a while to really appreciate Shakespeare, and the closest I have come to understanding it was to see a play performed by actors who understood it at least better than me. I took Sarah to Blackfriars Theatre in Staunton, VA to see a All’s Well That Ends Well and Two Gentlemen of Verona. It was a far cry from bending over the text book following along as your buddy in class-who had never read a book for pleasure in his life and barely had a grasp on 21st century American English-stumble through his assigned lines without the faintest idea of the plot. Those Blackfriars performances have stuck with me and I would like to go back again some day.

Phrasing isn’t any one thing, but a host of subtle things like tone, dynamics, timing, space, and feel. These are all musical terms that could each have their own textbook and university course. So whether speaking or playing and instrument, how do you learn to phrase well? For a start, I think it is important to know what you want to say. For a musician, the most important part of phrasing is to get emotionally involved with the music. I think the best way to do that is to pay attention to the lyrics. And that means you need to understand the lyrics. People can tell when you don’t know what you are talking about. You don’t have to master the language of music-or the English language for that matter- to say something that will connect with a listener, but you do need to master your vocabulary, no matter its size. You don’t want to sound like someone who picked a random $40 word out of a dictionary and tried to force it into a $15 vocabulary. It will stick out like a Ferrari in a trailer park. If you want to build your vocabulary you need to read good stories-and listen to good music. A well written novel has the power to increase your emotional intelligence. Good readers understand empathy.

Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding. Proverbs 17:28

If you want your words to carry weight, don’t waste them.

200: A Milestone in Writing

This is my 200th article for what began in 2016 as Mostly From Memory, a blog where I started sharing short essays on my memories from growing up in a small town in Alabama. Since the statute of limitations has not run out on a few events, I am kind of out of material for the childhood stuff unless I want to run the risk of getting sued. Or I could start making stuff up. Which is how I think that some authors get into fiction. You take a piece of story that really happened, but you change the names of the people and move the location to somewhere far off like Pell City, Alabama, and describe some of the characters as prettier or uglier than they really were and add some extra details like an embezzling scheme, a murder, and some romance or dragons to spice up the plot a little bit. You know, just like cooking. You begin with a chicken breast—that’s the part that really happened—but it could really hurt someone if you serve it raw. The fiction part comes in with how you decide to present it: grilled, fried, boiled, fricasseed… And a good cook can make just about anything palatable, if not spectacular.

I haven’t gotten into fiction yet, but I have branched out and written about a lot of topics like grief, obituaries, music, biographical sketches, and social and cultural constructs, and how to overcome them. It is this sort of material that I am drawn to write about.

This makes me ask the question, has my writing style changed? I think it has changed in the same way that a person ages. If a man is still talking and behaving like a 20 year old at 40 then I think you would agree that something is off. And when a 40 year old takes measures to alter their physical features to appear 20, whether people pretend along with them or not, we all know that it is fake. I feel that my writing has aged with me.

And maybe my readers have come and gone just like friends in different in different stages of life. I may have lost some of my readers when my material shifted, and that is understandable. Just like when you take the last bicycle ride with your neighbor who is getting his driver’s license the next week. You’re still friends, but he is going places you can’t go now. And you spend less time together. Then when you get your license, you’ll probably go to different places than he went. And you meet new people who are less interested in your past than they are your future.

I did a lot of looking back when I first started writing. I felt the need to put some of those oral stories into writing. I am glad I did because I didn’t realize how quickly my sources would move on without warning to a place that I can’t go yet, taking their oral stories with them. I have been looking inward a lot of my recent material. But I am trying to practice looking out.

I think I am beginning to understand why older people say less.

If you have been with me since the beginning, thank you. You may not have noticed the shift because you’ve grown with me. But if you are an occasional reader, you may have noticed changes just like your great-aunt noticed when she only saw you twice a year at Easter and Christmas. And I guess that is what I want to talk about today: I really just want to write articles that make people want to think about things that matter.

I think people matter. I think how you treat people matters. I think motives and attitude matters. I think education matters. I think that morals matter. I think that mental health matters. I think that physical health matters.

Above all, I think truth matters.

All Quiet on Pew Number Five

There was a wedding at church on Saturday.

There was a wedding at church on Saturday. The kind without all the fuss of rehearsal dinners. Or rehearsals. Or the hassle of getting a hotel room. No frivolity, just a simple wedding like I remembered when I was a kid, with cake and punch in the church foyer. I really like these kind of weddings.

As my family sat in the pew on the Bride’s side waiting for the wedding to start, I noticed that it was uncommonly quiet for our church. Even the children were whispering. At least some of them. You can almost hear what your neighbors are thinking when it is that quiet. But that is what the Bride wanted, no filler music that didn’t mean anything. Just one song to walk in with.

Silence makes some people uncomfortable. And uncomfortable people make the rest of us uncomfortable. But I like quiet places. A lot more than I like canned mosquito music that nobody asked to listen to, or TV noise. I like to be able to hear the ticking of my watch. I like to hear the birds singing outside. Most of all I like being able to hear myself think.

“Quiet as a church? If had a car that sounded like my church, I wouldn’t drive it out of the driveway.”

-Tom Trimble

As I sat there on the pew, hardly daring to whisper, I thought about how much racket I normally make at church. I have blown three speakers while playing guitar at church. Now I’m not proud of that, because it was expensive, but probably some of the loudest moments in my life were at church. But there we were, sitting on the pew trying not breath too heavily so as not to disturb the quiet. It was so peaceful. I think I’ll slip up there again soon when no one is there and just listen to the silence.

Magazines

I think that it is healthy to have hobbies or areas of interest.

I just finished reading A Hunter’s Fireside Book: Tales of Dogs, Ducks, Birds & Guns by Gene Hill. If you were not aware, I am not a hunter, but I appreciate good writing no matter the subject-within reason of course. Good writing can make even the most boring pastime seem interesting. While I don’t necessarily think hunting boring, I do think Gene Hill was a good writer. And I really enjoyed the book. This book was a collection of columns he wrote for various outdoor magazines in the 60s and 70s. I can understand how readers felt when they got a new magazine and turned straight to where they knew his column could be found. He finished his career as full-time columnist for Field & Stream magazine. He died in 1997. All of this reminded me of how much magazines used to be a part of my life.

Zach had a big pile of second hand Field & Stream magazines that he procured from the thrift store. I used to read them too, and I didn’t really care for hunting or fishing then either. But the stories were interesting. And so were the ads. We’d stare at those rifles. Or think of how much fun we could have with one of those 6 wheeled amphibious ATVs in the tiny black and white ad spots in the very back of the magazine.

There was another author that wrote a lot for Field & Stream, Patrick McManus. We had some of his books, but those second hand magazines from his era would’ve been worn out a long time before they could be found by a country boy at a thrift store.

Every once in a while Mom would buy us a bunch of National Geographic magazines from the thrift store or a yard sale. We even had a subscription on and off throughout my life. I loved those old magazines. The pictures were so interesting that you wanted to read the articles. I still want to go to see some of the places that I discovered reading those old yellow magazines; Angkor Wat, Easter Island, New Guinea, Hong Kong, India…Steve McCurry and Rudyard Kipling have taken me to India so many times that I would like to go in person some day. The advertisements in National Geographic were quite a bit different than the ads in Field & Stream. I distinctly remember the Rolex (specifically the Milgauss) and Canon ads. It was also interesting to see ads for new cars that you had only ever known as old.

I think that it is healthy to have hobbies or areas of interest.

Mom subscribed to Traditional Home. Those ads made me realize that we were in fact, poor. But I loved looking at the floor plans of those high dollar houses. That magazine also gave me an appreciation for interior design. It is hard to condense 15 years of reading a decorating and design magazine into a single sentence or even paragraph other than to say that poor design choices still bother me.

I guess the only guitar magazine that I have ever subscribed to was Premier Guitar. For the longest time I liked them because they never had people on the cover, just guitars. That changed when BB King died. I have stopped subscribing because I think the editor is a smart alec. Even so, whenever a new guitar student asked me a question about say, what a phaser pedal does, I have to work hard to keep from giving them a 5 page report with works cited and audio clips because they really want a brief AI answer, not a research paper, or even a magazine article.

I think that it is healthy to have hobbies or areas of interest.

Magazines were how I discovered a lot of things, like how to identify a quality piece of furniture. And where I learned a lot of guitar and gardening techniques. I started eating honey and gorgonzola cheese on crackers because I read it in a magazine. I learned how to intonate guitars and marinate grouse in magazines. I still haven’t marinated any grouse though, but I can intonate your guitar for $45 if you’re in the Jena area.

Some magazines would print corrections from previous articles. I liked that. I like it when things are made right. It also was a good reminder that real people worked to put together the magazine. I also liked that more than likely a reader caught the mistake. Sometimes a magazine would post a letter from a reader and it was as interesting to read as one of the regular staff writers. What a cool career writing for a magazine would be.

Superman could’ve picked any job he wanted as a cover, but he picked journalism.

I suppose that some people still subscribe to magazines, but I’m not sure who they are. I imagine that your social media algorithm is a good representation of what your magazine rack might’ve looked like 40 years ago. One nice thing about that is information is more readily available. I’m not sure that social media can quite replicate the feeling of seeing a magazine in the mailbox.

Fiddlesticks

It was my grandmother’s most often used expletive. She only used it in frustration. Like when you’re pouring oil out of a frying pan into a glass jar through a strainer to use later and you spill the oil everywhere; that’s a proper time to say fiddlesticks! There was always a tinge of resignation in her voice when she said it, as if it was declaration of surrender to the task that had just outmaneuvered her.

Inevitably there would be someone standing by who saw the humor in the situation, and they would laugh. Gram would laugh too. No sense in staying upset all day over something silly.

Mom’s favorite wooden cuss-word was “Cat Hair!”

Apparently, people have been using fiddlesticks in this way since the 18th century. Whenever she said it I would imagine someone knocking over a bucket of violin bows. Have you ever priced a violin bow? Or I would visualize a couple of bows crossed above Gram’s head like some musical coat of arms. Or perhaps a barrage of fiddlesticks raining down on her. It is funny what you think as a child.

I had always assumed that a fiddlestick was the bow of the violin, and that is the original definition. But fiddlesticks is also what you call a pair of sticks that a second person plays on the strings of a violin to add percussion to a fiddle tune. It is quite common in Cajun fiddle tunes. But I didn’t grow up listening to Cajun folk music, much less seeing people play it. I was reminded of this word-and Gram- today because I saw someone playing the fiddlesticks in this video.

Diabetes: A Health Topic

“November is Diabetes Awareness Month. Maybe you could a talk on Diabetes for us.”

I was asked to speak at the Senior Center about Diabetes because November was Diabetes Awareness Month and that would be a good “Health Topic.” When the lady said that over the phone I had a flashback to the fifth grade when I was assigned a body system to do a research report on. I don’t remember what my assignment was, most likely because my Mother probably got carried away “Helping” me, but I do remember Amanda Giovanni’s* topic. She was assigned the respiratory system. There came a day when we were to present our projects orally and with visual aides before the entire combined classroom of 4th and 5th graders and more importantly before Mrs. McManus and Mrs. Battle. I’m sure I did adequately on the oral portion, and my Mom’s artistic hand on the visual side either landed me some extra points or counted against me depending on whether or not my teacher’s were fooled into thinking that I had mastered the art of hatching and cross-hatching at the ripe old age of ten.

I wish Amanda would’ve had a little help from anyone. The poor girl was unprepared. When it was her turn to stand and deliver, she held up a crumpled piece of wide ruled paper with a pencil drawing of a pair of quickly drawn lungs. I can remember her anxious posture while standing before her peers. I have transcribed-from memory-the entirety of her presentation.

“My report is on the Respiratory System. Our lungs help us breathe. Without our lungs, what would we do?”

Utter silence fell over the room. I think we all learned a lesson far more valuable than any fifth grade research could tell us about the respiratory system. It was Mrs. McManus who broke the silence. She was disappointed that the child was unprepared, but there was also an element of understanding of what the girl may have been experiencing at home. Not everyone had a Mom who would drive to the BP gas station right after church to get a piece of poster board and then come home and free hand the circulatory system with H Encyclopedia Brittanica opened to Human Body while you were tucked in bed.

“You’ve had weeks to prepare for this project. You could’ve asked me for help.”

I want to say we had a whole month to procrastinate on this project. I haven’t changed all that much since 1996. I still wait til the last minute on a lot of things because I work better under pressure.

Work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion.

-Parkinson’s Principle

So here I am in the prime of middle-age, writing a quick article instead of researching Diabetes. I’ll get around to it-I’ve still got plenty of time. But I did think about just drawing a picture of some cookies covered by a general prohibition sign and saying something like, Diabetes is bad. 0/10 would not recommend and just hoping for the best. I might not get asked back, but I would almost guarantee that someone in that room will probably still remember that speech vividly in 30 years.

*Names have been changed to protect the innocent.