What did people do for fun 100 years ago? I researched 1920s entertainment for a program I gave recently to my DAR chapter. The John Hoyle chapter Daughters of the American Revolution is marking its 100th anniversary this year. Our main celebration is planned at the Hickory History Center. There will be 1920s décor, food and tours of Harper House, …
Ft. Dobbs offers deep dive into frontier past
My young granddaughter likes to build pillow forts. One day, as she was busy rearranging the cushions in my den, I suggested we visit a real fort. The state historic site includes a log cabin visitor center and the fort itself, a 40 x 53-foot block log fortification that’s three stories high. It was part of a line of defenses …
It’s deja vu all over again
Do we have to do this again? Whenever I hear news about Russian nuclear threats, I’m back in third grade. It’s October 1962 and my family is watching President Kennedy give a speech about the U.S. blockade of Cuba over deployment of Soviet missiles. We wonder if this really is World War III. My Dad, ever a pilot, will talk …
Close encounters of the famous kind
A few years ago, a friend challenged me to list all of the famous people I’ve ever seen in person. Listing such sightings is the sort of thing you might think about, but never do. I’ll admit I ran out of gas before I got the list project past the on-ramp. The first “star” I remember meeting was a local …
Things are getting crazy out there
It’s a crazy world we live in. If you’ve followed the news, you know that our neighbors to the north have been in turmoil over a trucker protest. The Freedom Convoy was protesting federal COVID 19 vaccine mandates, were all about individual choice, they said. Some 90 percent of the truckers are reportedly vaccinated. It’s the mandates that have them …
Valentines to last a lifetime, and then some
My new year’s resolution is to sort through every drawer, closet and cabinet this year. So far I’ve rifled through roughly 1/3 of the house. This past Saturday, I came across a box labeled “Mom & Dad’s Old Stuff.” Inside, as I expected, were their vintage childhood things—a toy iron, child’s safe with a lithographed image of a ship, a …
Winter storms racing through the alphabet
Were you just a little freaked out about that winter storm on Jan. 16? I was. I caved to the media hype and I watched weather reports all day that Saturday, fretting over the rainbow of map colors. Were we pink or blue or purple? Pink, I know is wintry mix, the dreaded combination that shut down the grid for …
2022 couldn’t get here soon enough
Thank heavens it’s 2022 already. These past 12 months have been doozies. Things started to go south for me last spring when an intestinal flareup progressed to a solid round of antibiotics. This wasn’t my first colonoscopy rodeo, as they say. Fasting and a liquid diet is one thing, but the gallon jug of lemon-flavored “prep” is the clincher, especially …
Thank Gift Books for our commercial Christmas
If you’re basking in afterglow of Christmas with a new read in hand, you’re part of a long-held tradition. Gift books spurred the “commercialization” of gift-giving at Christmas 200 years ago. I ran across this intriguing fact in a recent blog on “Literary Hub.” The title of the article caught my attention: “How the book business invented modern gift-giving.” The …
In search of vicarious treasure
You Tube algorithms know me well. A few weeks ago, they suggested a metal detector video. Within hours, I’d dipped my toes into the world of treasure hunting with some young men scoping a Victorian yard in Kansas, a Southerner searching a Civil War site and a hiker from New Hampshire braving swamps and underbrush to locate a 1600s cellar …