Do you remember this old camp song? Late last night, while we were all in bed, Mother O'Leary took the lantern to the shed, And when the cow kicked it over, she winked her eye and said, "There'll be a hot time in the old town tonight!" The infamous Mrs. O'Leary and her cow I thought of that song when I realized that yesterday, October 8, marked the one hundred fifty-fifth anniversary of a historic tragedy, the Great Chicago Fire. I don't remember that event. I'm old, but not

Although a lot of academic types try to make entrepreneurs of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries sound like ogres, calling them "robber barons" and worse, they actually were a boon to the U.S. economy and a blessing to the average American worker and family. And we are still feeling the effects of their efforts today. Just one example is Henry Ford. Henry Ford Ford had been working for some time to develop an automobile to compete with the other early car manuf

I was under the mistaken assumption when I planned this blog post that International Coffee Day was on August 29 and that today, the 25th, was the date that post should appear. But a bit of research showed that the United Nations have designated it to be commemorated on October 1 instead. And we all know that if the UN mandates it, it must be obeyed! Tough! I've already done my research and writing, so here is my post, UN or no UN! The first thing I do every night before goin

Apparently, I'm told, September is Classical Music Month. Although media attention lately has been all about country music with the recent passing of Dolly Parton, and although her name is certainly not associated with classical music, I'd like to focus a bit today on the classical spectrum and how I came to appreciate it. By the way, Parton got her first step toward stardom, her big break, in my home town, Knoxville, Tennessee. Cas Walker, a grocer who had stores in Tennesse

September 11, 25 years ago, began as a normal day. Kids went to school, eager for the new year ahead. Parents and others went to their jobs. Some people were flying on planes of a variety of airlines on trips to various destinations for various reasons. But 19 of those fliers had one-way tickets, and they all had a nefarious reason for their flights. They were prearranged into four teams, and they worked in a coordinated way to hijack four commercial airliners, two each belon

I recently learned that this Sunday, September 6, has been designated as National Read-a-Book Day. I don't have to be reminded to read books, but I'm so busy reading generally in my researching and writing that I sometimes find it hard to read an entire book. This year has been especially difficult with multiple projects and responsibilities overflowing my calendar, and I've fallen far behind my normal reading pace, by which I would regularly get 25 or 30 books read during th

By this time, most schools have begun their new year or soon will. We've been unable to ignore the resumption because of the ubiquitous back-to-school ads and store displays, which have cluttered the aisle since shortly after school was out for the summer. It's that time of year again! Also, I've been involved in conducting three in-service training sessions for teachers during that recent week. So I've been thinking about, planning, and preparing those workshops since late M

While on a recent visit to attend the Summers family reunion (my mother's side of the clan) in the community where I grew up, I began reminiscing about the stores my parents patronized during my childhood. The closest one was a small country store on the corner of Hill Road and Fort Sumter Road. My maternal great grandparents (Harvey and Lula Graybeal) and later my paternal grandparents (Blaine and Omega Peterson) operated it. The original Graybeal-Peterson country store at t

My wife and I recently took two of our grandchildren to an amazing exhibit of life in miniature, the HO-scale model railroad layout of the Apple Valley Model Railroad Club in Hendersonville, North Carolina (https://avmrc.com). The 1902 Hendersonville train depot We had taken three other of our grandchildren there several months earlier. They had enjoyed it immensely, and we thought the other grandkids would, too. They certainly did. (I did, too. It made me antsy to build anot

Fifty-three years had passed since the surviving crewmen of S-235 had all been together. Plans were laid over many months to make the much-anticipated event happen. Over the intervening years, they had each recalled numerous events that had melded them into a hospitable, well-oiled machine in which every member fulfilled his expected role in amiable comradeship with the others. Now they longed to be reunited for potentially one last time. German Schnellboot, World War II Not

At midnight tonight, July 2026 will be history. In only two or three weeks, kids will be dragging, or skipping, according to their outlook, off to school again. My! Where has the summer gone?! On the bright side, it's National Mutt Day. Most of the dogs we had when I was a kid were pure-bred Spitz, but there was always a litter or two of mutts. Mutt But in many ways mutts are the best. No highfalutin pretensions. What you saw was what you got. They loved us (provided we kept

Time has a way of changing one's thinking and perspective on many issues of life. For instance, marriage. That six-year-old sage "l'll never get married," I said to Mother when I was a six-year-old sage. Mother was too important to me. She just smiled. "I'll never marry," I said as a high school know-it-all. Running track and tracking the Atlanta Braves (as bad as they were at the time) kept me too busy for that. Those were my prime interests. "If I ever marry, it'll never be

Over the years, I've found myself dating things according to either when my children were born or what car I owned at the time--or both. For example, I remember the year I began teaching in Pennsylvania because it was just before our first child was born. And I recall the year we moved to new jobs in South Carolina because it was the year our third minivan died and we had to buy the Mazda. I've recently been recalling all the vehicles I've owned since I began driving. The fir

On July 7, Dillon Summers wrote home to his family for the first time in at least a month. Dillon with his sister Hazel before shipping out overseas "Hellow, Mom & family. "Will drop You a few lines today to let You know I am still well & doing O.K. trusting every one there is in good health & doing fine.... I had a nice hot shower Yesterday. The first one since I've been here." "Here" was Normandy, France, where he had arrived with the other men of the 391st Armored Field Ar

Tomorrow we celebrate our nation's 250th birthday. But the passing of the Declaration of Independence was the culmination of a rather lengthy process. It wasn't a rash, hastily done act of impulsive rabblerousers or "influencers." It was the result of years of oppression and wrongs inflicted by the people's own government across the ocean and their deliberative reaction and response to it. There were the numerous instances of "taxation without representation": the Stamp Act (

A news item attracted my attention and set me on a brief journey down memory lane. It seems that on June 26, 1927, during the height of the rollicking, fun-filled Roaring Twenties, just before the stock market crash that signaled the beginning of the Great Depression, a roller coaster called "The Cyclone" opened at Coney Island . The Coney Island Cyclone It's been a loooooong time since I was on a roller coaster, but that news item started me to recalling the rides I had been

Sunday marks Father's Day, but that's not the only time I remember my father, and I suspect it's the same for you. Something or other reminds me of Daddy almost every day, as it should. A quick online search shows that Father's Day was first celebrated on June 19, 1910, in Spokane, Washington, by Sonora Smart Dodd in honor of her father. It has to be true, I guess, since that's what AI says. Daddy I don't remember the first time I celebrated Daddy on a Father's Day. AI can't

Every family is unique, as are their histories and genealogies. Yet, many families share some interesting similarities, especially if they've passed down similar values and priorities. These facts were reinforced in my mind as I read the stories in the latest book by my friend in Iowa Joy Neal Kidney, The Immigrant and the Outlaw. It showed up in my mailbox last week, and I dropped everything else I was doing and began reading. As I sped through the compelling stories, I was

In the history of the United States, we've had only two presidents who were elected to two nonconsecutive terms. Everyone knows that Donald Trump achieved that feat, of course. But far fewer could name the other one: Grover Cleveland . Today, he is among the least known of our long line of 47 presidents. He was loved and respected by some and hated and vilified by others. But he's worth getting to know. Grover Cleveland Born on March 18, 1837, in Caldwell, New Jersey, Clevela

One of my favorite movies, one that our family developed a tradition of watching every year on (or near) the Fourth of July, is Yankee Doodle Dandy starring James Cagney . Every time we watched it, we came away whistling or singing the lyrics of the theme song: "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy, Yankee Doodle Do or die, A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam, Born on the Fourth of July." That movie premiered in New York City on this date in 1942, during the first dark days of World War