The Reindeer Keeper

No matter where you go, no matter how many places you plant roots, work, raise a family and make friends there will be but one place you will ever call your Hometown. It might be a hamlet or village, city or metropolis-it doesn't matter. Your hometown is where you grew up. You probably went to school there and most always relatives were near. Summer is the time many go back to where memories of those early years are engrained in the sidewalks and parks, corner stores and downtowns, movie theatres and malls, libraries, trees, fields and maybe even rivers, streams, mountains or skyscrapers. Summer is the season of going back to family reunions where new babies are googled over and elders appreciated and familiar tales are heard again and new stories are told and newlyweds sit by couples who've gone through many a four seasons. Besides festivals and fairs, class reunions bring  people back home too. For a few hours you get to step back in time and recall the bi...

Years ago front yards were for playing-really playing and pretending and spending time in from the minute you got up-especially when on summer vacation and the days were long and hot and hazy and the lemonade freshly squeezed and kept in the refrigerator in a certain glass pitcher with slices of lemon just waiting to make your mouth pucker up and ice cubes ready to be chomped on. The front yard of our grandparents' farmhouse was everything any kid could have asked for. It had trees to climb up into with limbs to hang from and swing from and drop to the ground from. There were clumps of bushes to hide in-or-around-or behind. One particular clump had some bamboo-type things growing in it. They made great bows and arrows after we took the leaves off them and one of us ran inside for some string. Such weapons came in handy when fighting the enemy or surviving a catastrophe. Catastrophes were  daily, some times hourly. That happens when imaginations are full-speed ahead. O...

When you think about the 4th of July and what it represents besides hotdogs and parades I think it is rather ironic that we just lost a man who represented the values and goodness in an endearing little place called Mayberry. Mayberry could have been any small town in the U.S.A.. Years back when the Andy Griffith Show came on the air every week, we as a family would sit down and watch the show together. There was no worry about the content. It was all apple pie and family while still dealing with real issues. It was TV in its peak of quality programming and that had a lot to do with the man himself and a cast of supporting characters we all considered part of our family too. While we all loved the show, my mother really loved the show especially when Andy and Barney would get going which usually led to some really funny situations. When Barney twitched about with his eyes bulging and his tone trying to be in charge as only a Barney Fife could my mother would s...