Jimmy Reed

Greatness

Having watched countless college football games this season, I’ve observed that the desire for greatness appears to be lacking among some players.

That Lying Dog!

Never ask a barber if you need a haircut. The other day I asked my barber, Larry, and he said I definitely needed a trim. While he clipped the white scraggly hackles festooning my haggard old head, he recounted a tale the previous customer told him about his cousin Clarence.

Thanksgiving Is For Giving Thanks

The sign read, “Thanksgiving is for giving thanks.” Driving by it on the way to work, I thought … that message is an understatement; it’s too obvious. I could have come up with something better.

Thanksgiving At The Gin

The hardest job I ever had was managing my father’s cotton gin. When I returned from overseas military service, he said, “Son, we’ve got a mighty fine crop to gather, so I’ll be spending all my time in the fields during harvest. You’ll have to run the gin.”

Flying The Pup

Nothing drives some men more than ego, which isn’t always bad, unless it’s inflated. Shortly after receiving my pilot’s license, my ego was super-inflated.

Liberty

For Americans foolish enough to heed radical secularists, mendacious media milquetoasts, Hollywood hedonistic heretics, and politically elite glitterati — who not only refuse to recognize Thanksgiving as a reaffirmation of faith in God, but also strive to impose their non-belief on those who do recognize it as such — this uniquely American holiday is nothing more than a break from work, a time to sleep late, overeat, over-spend, party nonstop … and certainly not to do what they should: Give thanks.

The Blank Check

Someone once defined military veterans as those who recognize that love of country is the willingness to write a blank check, payable to the United States Of America for an amount up to the last full measure of devotion: life itself.

Watching The Wasteland

In many respects, I believe television is a vast wasteland, so I limit sofa slob time to a few weekend hours, enjoying NASCAR.

The Child Who Never Was

Teenager Sally Smith had never heard of personhood, but through relentless, tormenting guilt she would come to understand its meaning.

Meanest Goblin

It was a pitch-dark, moonless Halloween night, “blacker than a hundred midnights, down in a cypress swamp,” poets would say. All of us are crazier at night than in daytime … triply so on Halloween.

No Match For Corn

My British Literature students’ indifference toward Shakespeare’s poetry was frustrating, and when I said that my interest in his work grows every time I teach it, a student remarked, “For seniors like you, that is understandable, but his work is out of date for our generation.”

Red Ryder Riflemen

Anyone who has ever visited Pace, Mississippi, knows only a pace is required to be out of town. In this tiny Delta farming community, everybody knows everybody … except on Halloween, when kids, disguised in the get-up of ghosts, gangsters, goons, goblins and ghouls, roam the streets and terrorize the three hundred or so residents, who offer treats to avoid tricks.

Corduroy Horror

Adolescence is a troubling time; if one falls in love during that turbulent transition from pubescence to maturation, it can be terrifying. Such was the case when I had eyes only for Carol Rose.

Ain’t Got No Couth

If the Great Satan-hating scientists working for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who, in a recent election, learned eleven seconds after the polls closed that eleven million Iranians wanted him to remain their president, could figure out how to bounce death ray beams simultaneously off all cell phone satellites, ninety-nine percent of America’s youth would be fried instantly.

Pazzo!

During my farming career, I kept bees as a hobby and also to generate extra income. Customers believed honey from local hives alleviated their children’s allergy problems.

Coop, The Cop

The crops did well that year, and Leland’s football team went undefeated. We seniors were happy. Only one thing bugged us: Coop.

Calzamanian Vigor

Leo “Step Light” Larson got his nickname from the way he walked. One of his Achilles tendons had been severed, leaving him unable to put his heel on the ground, which caused him to tiptoe on one foot … “stepping lightly,” folks said.

Self-Tackle-I-Zation

Sometimes plain old English just won’t do. Sometimes exaggeration is better. An exaggerated description of a touchdown that never happened many years ago has stuck in my mind ever since.

Pencil Parable

Storytelling takes many forms, but stories that endure — those that remain popular down through the ages — have in common certain elements that cause listeners or readers to remain attentive from the first word to the last: They are simple, impart moral and spiritual instructions, and describe human transformation.

When It Rains, It Pours

My favorite logo is the Morton Salt Girl. Still wearing the same yellow dress, still shielding herself from rain with an umbrella, and still spilling salt from a container clutched under her arm, she hasn’t changed since I was a boy.