Category: Family Tales
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Him
He litters his bedroom floor with wet towels, sweaty undershirts, and nasty socks. He seems incapable of turning off lights or fans. He cannot put dead batteries in the trash to save his life. He usually needs a haircut and a shave. His drumming skills vastly supersede his vocal skills, as he belts out 70s…
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Searching for the Baby Jesus
I laugh at the Baby Jesus every year when we pull the Christmas decorations out of the attic. We have an old popcorn tin full of Christmas toys. We have a Charlie Brown set with his little tree. We have all the characters from Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer, including the misfit toys and Chuck’s favorite,…
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Daylight Savings Time and the Night I Missed Carol Burnett
find Kristi and me in above picture “Y’all have to go to bed early tonight.” “Why?” “Because the time changes, and we have to move the clocks forward an hour.” “No, we don’t. We turn them back an hour. We get to stay up an hour later.” Evidently in the mid-70s, spring forward and fall…
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Snippets of Starla
The hypothesis for Starla’s 7th grade science project at Young Jr. High School was “Adding food dye to chicken feed causes hens to lay colored eggs.” Daddy built a chicken coop for the backyard on Decatur Street, and Starla set about dying chicken feed. Day after day, her chickens laid the prettiest brown eggs, not…
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Byrds of a Feather
Lovey LouEmma Andrews was 13 when she married 15-year-old Henry Isom Byrd. I was four years old when she died. I don’t remember her, but folks say her name fit her. She was my mama’s mama’s mama. My mama told me she sat at Mama Byrd’s bedside after her stroke and prayed that she could…
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Aarrgghh and Ahoy!
I mentioned to Chuck that I thought a Disney cruise would be fun sometime. “Absolutely not,” his typical response to things not his idea. “Do you know how much those things cost?!” Then, early in the summer, the Ramseys told us that they had booked one for October. After we got the kids settled back in school,…
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Cheering in the Bathroom
Starla was a pee-wee cheerleader when she was about 5 or 6, so that would make Angie only about 2 or 3. I wasn’t born, so you’ll just have to trust my penchant for other people’s memories, or say I made it up. I’m fine either way. It was Angie’s turn to spend the night…
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Ode to Critters
“I am 18 years old. Can I PLEASE have a bunny?” Emma had begged for a bunny for a decade. “NO! NO! NO!” What was the purpose of a bunny as a pet? She would play with it for a week and then tire of it, and I would be stuck with trying to get…
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Clothes in the Kitchen
Jordan Lee had just decided she wanted to be a girl and moved into her pretty pink bedroom. When JL was born, Starla moved Justin to the twin bed in his room and put JL in the crib. That way, she was able to keep the third bedroom as a guest room for Mama…
