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Shingles. We all know what they are, right? They're those pieces of asphalt that are nailed to our roofs to keep the moisture out and protect the house. Shingles are good. They are our friends in that they provide a covering for us. I used to work with a roofer/sider and got a very up close and personal look at shingles. There were many days when my main job was to make sure that my boss did not run out of the shingles he needed to finish roofing the house on which we were working. That meant trips up and down the ladder sometimes for me carrying him his precious cargo. Shingles.…  ( Click for more )

Thursday evening, as I rushed through the house, I turned the TV on to check the action at the Memorial Golf Tournament. The Memorial is one of my favorite tournaments. It was begun by Jack Nicklaus on the Muirfield Village Golf Course in Dublin, Ohio just outside his home town of Columbus. I have had the privilege to not only attend the tournament in years past but also to cover it for a local newspaper in Bellville, Ohio while we were living there.

When the TV came on with the tournament I could here a noisy hum. I thought to myself, "ESPN must be using some of their old…  ( Click for more )

A week ago today my wife and I were walking on the beach at North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We like to hold hands. (As Professor Andy Dale used to say, that's one less free hand they can hit you with) As we walked the beach we held hands and waded in and out of the surf as the waves came in and lapped at the shoreline. Then we saw her.

She was walking rather briskly down the beach towards us. Her eyes were intently fixed on us. She was smiling as she came toward us. She stopped us there on the beach and told us that it was good to see an older couple walking and holding…  ( Click for more )

On December 3 of this year, Caleb Tony was returning home early in the morning. He was cutting across Sebree Road to Long Lick Road and his home in rural Scott County, Kentucky. As he got into a curve he felt his right front wheel catch the side of the pavement and then drop onto the deep shoulder of the road. He tried to steer his Ford pickup back onto the road but could not. He ran into the fence line between Sebree Road and the shallow creek which runs along side of it. His pickup tore out about fifty feet of fence before it started careening toward the creek and the possibility…  ( Click for more )

Yogi Berra is an American treasure. Born to a working class family in St. Louis, Missouri, he was raised right across the street from Joe Garagiola, who became his lifelong friend. At age thirteen he quit school with his parents' consent to start working in a shoe factory. He became an all-star catcher with the New York Yankees and was known as one of the best hitters ever to play the position. However, if you ask people today about Yogi Berra most of them probably would be surprised to know that he played baseball at all. They know him better for his quirky statements which…  ( Click for more )

Golf is a sport of precision. It is one of the few sports which requires the precise placement of a small spheroid slightly smaller than one and three quarters inches onto an area more than one hundred yards away. That is why golf is such an exasperating sport. We can kick a field goal, hit a fastball, shoot a basket, roll a strike and catch a fish just like the professional sportsmen do. However, to place a golf ball inside ten feet of the hole from one hundred yards out eight out of ten times is a therapy session waiting to happen. Add to that the uncertainty of the exact conditions…  ( Click for more )

Back in the late 60s (no, that's not the 1860s) I worked one summer for a local farmer. Jim Paisley owned a lot of acreage in Fayette County in several different locations on both side of I-71 south of my home town of Jeffersonville, Ohio. When I first started working for him was on weekends in the spring. He put me to work cutting ground in preparation for planting. My Saturdays were spent bouncing around on a tractor for about eight hours. It was fun and not exactly the most taxing thing I had ever done. I enjoyed it.

When summer came I was off the tractor and at Mr. Paisley's…  ( Click for more )

What's the biggest problem with taking a vacation? One has to return home to rest adequately. My lovely wife, Becky, and I were in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, over the Memorial Day weekend. We found out the hard way that one never wants to go to a beach resort town over a national holiday weekend. One cannot move about as freely as one would wish to do, due to the overcrowded streets. So much for the "one" stuff.

Who would have thought that, in a place called Myrtle BEACH, that would be the one place we could not easily access? Our first foray to find a beach left us in…  ( Click for more )

Let me just take a few more moments to continue with Jim Brown. Back in the late '90s I took a trip to Florida to see my mom and visit my nephews Todd and Darin and their families. I had promised Dad before he died that I would be sure to get down and see her at least a couple of times a year. I was good to my promise right up to the last month of her life in 2002. I didn't do it because I had promised Dad. I did it because I loved my Mom and because it gave me the chance to visit my nephews and my sister, Peggy, who always called me an only child. More on that some other time. …  ( Click for more )

Long have I been a fan of the Cleveland Browns footbal team. I was first drawn to their play back in 1957 when I was just starting the second grade. I had just been introduced to the sport of football by the guys I knew and asked my dad if I could watch the games with him on TV. He was only too glad to have a football buddy to join him while mom napped on the couch those Sunday afternoons. When it came time to watch the game of the week, we watched CBS, Channel 10, WBNS in Columbus, Ohio. They always showed the regional game. Back then that meant that they showed the Cleveland…  ( Click for more )

It was one of those moments that goes by so quickly. It was shown for just a few brief seconds. Probably most of the people watching did not even notice it if they glanced away from the television to grab the remote. But there it was for all who were watching to see. Karl Malone, the old warrior from basketball battles over the years, grabbed his sweats and stepped over some of the seats in the Los Angeles arena to greet some men wearing Army uniforms.

The Los Angeles Lakers had just beaten the Minnesota Timberwolves in game three of their best of seven series for the Western…  ( Click for more )

I can remember in high school the preparations for our senior class night way back in 1968. One of the categories that night was the "Most Popular" boy and girl. It's been thirty-six years but I believe they were Bobby "Goose" Thornberry and Krista Wagner. (Mike, Rod, Deb, Peggy...a little help here) Earlier in my high school days I had hoped that I would be popular. That disappeared quickly as I continually had to spell my last name. I was that anonymous.

Popularity plays an important part in our lives. We have the most popular TV shows we watch, cars we drive, restaurants…  ( Click for more )

Golf crowned its "No Tiger" champions this past weekend. Vijay Singh of Fiji won the FedEx Cup as the most prolific golfer of the year. However, the Tour Championship went to Sergio Garcia. Confused? Me too. It seems like sports can't just look at the person with the most wins and say that their the best even though they have beaten everybody else. They have to have a tournament; some sort of end-of-season spectacular to heighten the excitement of the sports lovers whom they think salivate for such things. Sadly, in some sports the end-of-year contest is almost laughable…  ( Click for more )

The Cincinnati Reds have something that isn't all that normal. They have Barry Larkin. Barry has been with the Reds organization since he was drafted into Major League Baseball more than twenty years ago. That is what is not normal. Most professional athletes playing a team sport have not stayed with their original team throughout their entire professional history.

Barry Larkin has been loyal to a fault. He was born and raised in Cincinnati and had the Reds on his mind from day one. Playing for the Reds was his childhood dream. Now, all those years later, he is not only…  ( Click for more )

Memorial Day is not that far off. My wife and I will be on vacation the weekend of Memorial Day. We'll be relaxing in beautiful, and hopefully sunny, Myrtle Beach. We have our reservations all set. Even know where we're going to attend church that Sunday morning. We have everything ready except for one small matter. The Saturday before Memorial Day we have traditionally gone to my parents' cemetery sites. That will be taken care of today.

I was born and raised in South Central Ohio. My grandfather was a farmer near Washington Court House and my Dad started out farming before…  ( Click for more )

The mumps. You don't hear much about the mumps anymore. Cases of the mumps are as rare now as hens' teeth. Since the vaccine for the mumps was licensed way back when I started my senior year of high school (oops, I forgot...you don't know when I started my senior year...it was 1967) the cases of mumps reported among children have been slim and next to none. Children are vaccinated for the mumps now. They just don't get them. With that, a fascinating piece of americana has passed. The spreading of the mumps was one of those things that, when you heard someone's child had them,…  ( Click for more )

I have very few all time favorite TV programs. "Walker, Texas Ranger" is one of those because one of the things Chuck Norris made sure was present on his show was a strong and positive representation of God. There were even episodes where a blatant mention of Jesus needed in a person's life for a lasting positive change was the focal point. Hard not to like that kind of program. Another one is "JAG." The title is an acronym for Judge Advocate General and dealt with the workings of the JAG Corps in the Washington D. C. area. The writing was crisp, the plots…  ( Click for more )

"America's Got Talent" is a fascinating show for me. It features the best of America and, unfortunately, the worst. Many of the contestants are honestly gifted individuals whose talent is staggering. As I watch, I wonder where these people have been all these years. Then there are those who, as I watch, I wonder if these people have ever looked up the definition to the word, "talent." The judges got the talent pool down to the top forty for the most recent competition. On August 26, ten acts competed. On August 27, five were eliminated. Four according to…  ( Click for more )

Maggie and Doris were complete strangers. Maggie was a retired department store clerk while Doris was a middle aged single woman. Maggie had lost her husband to cancer two years prior and had married children with families while Doris had no family left as an only child whose parents were killed in a car wreck. They were even raised in communities that were totally dissimilar.

But here they were; roommates in a nursing care facility. Both women were stroke victims suffering partial permanent paralysis. But both were suffering from more than a stroke. Both women were placed…  ( Click for more )

It was one of those kind of nights. My wife and I hit the sack around ten; both of us very tired from a long day. We both seemed to drift off to sleep without any trouble. But staying asleep was what would pose the problem. If there was something that would keep us awake this would be the night that it would happen. We were on our way to a sleepless night.

Around 1:00 my cell phone rang. My wife and I both struggled to get awake to answer it. By the time my wife, whose side of the bed is closest to my dresser, got to the phone the caller had already hung up. We looked at…  ( Click for more )

Every year, on the first weekend of August, my wife's family has two reunions. The first is held on the Saturday before the first Sunday in August. The Fridley family reunion is held on the old Fridley homestead near an area known as Crows in Western Virginia not far from Covington. It was begun as a birthday party for Hezekiah Fridley, my wife's grandfather, and has continued as an opportunity for the family to get together every year. The other reunion takes place the first Sunday in August, not far from the family farm, at a mountain location called Big Ridge. It is the location…  ( Click for more )

Many, many years ago I used to play football. Almost sounds like a fairy tale doesn't it? But I did. I was a wide receiver for a football team. This was back in the halcyon days of the Green Bay Packers, Baltimore Colts and Cleveland Browns; before those teams were considered perennial runners-up or fallers by the wayside. We're talking your basic late 60's.

As a wide receiver, I was to run my routes with a certain measure of precision. The quarterback wanted to throw to a particular spot on the field and he expected me to be there when the route called for it. A ten yard…  ( Click for more )

Something marvelous happened recently and the sports world missed it. The media made a big deal about a situation that didn't really have that huge an impact on the event it was supposed to dampen. What was missed? Tiger Woods did not compete in the 2008 British Open and it didn't make a lick of difference. Now, wait just a minute, you might say! He could have won it. Ah, but that's just the point. He didn't beat the winner, Padraig Harrington, last year and the only other time he played Royal Birkdale in Southport, England, he finished third.

Granted, the greatest golfer in the…  ( Click for more )

"Christian." Perhaps no other title or name elicits as diverse reaction at just the mere mention of it as does this one. It has been applied with broad strokes by liberals who would sully its character and restricted to a fine line by exclusionists. It speaks to a certain lifestyle, thought and application. It is feared and loved. It is honored and derided. It is the name worn by those who are considered "the church." It is also worn by those who consider themselves good people according to their own standard. It is embraced by those who call themselves…  ( Click for more )