My Life As A Hobby

I’m pretty sure that most southerners own chainsaws. Think I’m kidding?  Just check out any neighborhood after a tornado or wind-related event.   There are so many people walking around with chainsaws that you’ll think you’re watching a bad horror movie.  Personally, I’ve always had a fear of chainsaws, which I think is healthy.  Anything that can sever fingers, toes, and limbs as easily as a branch from a pine tree deserves some respectful apprehension. Plus, not only do they look and sound scary, but that chain of death spins too close to the hands for me.   Chainsaws never seem to work very well for long periods of time. I almost always see someone sitting on a log tinkering with them. When I ask them what’s wrong, the answer’s inevitably, “It’s the chain.” Maybe it’s too loose, maybe it’s too tight, maybe you need to take a link out of it, or put more oil on it. The chain invariably gets the blame. Maybe it’s because, like me, they have no idea what ...

  Anyone that knows me -  for that matter, anyone that sees me, can tell that I enjoy food. I rarely meet a meal that I don’t like. My affinity for barbecue is well documented. And I’ve often said that if I lived in New Orleans with its cheap liquor and Cajun food, I would be a 400 pound alcoholic.  So, it should come as no surprise to anyone that I love hamburgers. Just listening to Jimmy Buffet sing about them makes my mouth water. And I’m not the only one - the average American eats 150 hamburgers per year.  It began early in life. Maybe I watched too many Popeye cartoons that featured Wimpy.  When McDonald’s first arrived in Birmingham, I made sure that my mom took me to that arched mecca as often as she could.  Sure, it was just a basic McDonald’s hamburger, but I loved them nonetheless.  On the Fourth of July when my dad would grill enough chicken and pork to feed a Mormon family, I always persuaded him to put a couple of beef patties on the f...

  From a grandparent’s perspective, one of the most wonderful things about having grandchildren (besides being able to give them back) is that we get to choose the names that they call us. I’m certainly glad this is the case, but considering how parents micro manage every aspect of their kid’s lives nowadays, it’s surprising that they even allow us this little perk. But they do. A survey found that 38% of all grandparent’s names are chosen by the grandparents themselves. This is no surprise.  Grand names are a source of pride - a badge of honor that can be compared and shared with their contemporaries from high school reunions to church covered dishes.  With such leeway, you can expect some, shall we say, interesting grandparent names. There are some doozies. MeeMaw, MomMee, Mawmaw, Pawpaw, Mimi, Nana, Momma, Mater, Marme, Mammu, Papu, Gran, Ga-Lu, YaYa, Grat, Grams, Pop Pop, Pops, Paw, Papa and no telling how many more. At the risk of insulting someone, I think B...

  As a kid, I had an unusual trait when it came to Christmas presents that I don’t think most kids my age shared. I never peeked. I loved the anticipation of getting gifts - maybe more than the actual gift itself. For example, on Christmas Eve we were allowed to open one present from under the tree - our choice.  I always picked what I thought was the worst one. Doing that gave one more night of excitement before the big reveal the next morning. I would always choose the one that felt mushy, meaning it was almost certainly socks or underwear - a horrible gift for a child. The gifts that rattled meant a game or some kind of cool toy.  The anticipation I felt when I knew I was going to get a present was a sensation that I always enjoyed.  As a result, I never even tried to find the place where my mom and dad hid the Christmas gifts from Santa. Sadly, my parents never told me their  hiding spot - not even as an adult.  Now that family secret is lost forever. M...

  I know some of you are going to think I’m out of my mind, and maybe I am. I bought tickets to see the Rolling Stones. Yes, the guys who are in their late 70s and early 80s; the guys whose faces have more wrinkles than a cotton shirt left in the dryer; the guys whose tour is sponsored by AARP - I’m going to see those guys.  When their new song came out, which is great by the way, I forwarded the video to a lifelong friend of mine who’s a big Stones fan. My message at the bottom of the email said 4 words: anytime, anywhere, any price.  I kept true to my word.  They’re coming and we’re going.  If you haven’t bought tickets for a concert lately, you are going to be in for a shock. Ticket prices for premium artists haven't just gone through the roof; they’ve gone beyond the stratosphere.  In the case of the Stones, they know their fans who paid five bucks for tickets fifty years ago can now afford to pay a hundred times that much. Nostalgia ain’t cheap...

I recently went to a Christmas party with 50 little old ladies between the age of 70 and 107. At some point after the meal, they began to play Dirty Santa. If you’ve never heard of this game before, it’s a blend of gift giving, greed, and WWE wrestling. Some historians think it was invented by the Romans to torture their prisoners before they were fed to the lions. And sitting and watching the game progress, it would be hard to disagree. I had no idea sweet grandmas could be so ruthless.     This is how it works:  everyone brings a gift worth a certain dollar value, carefully wrapped. The first person chooses a present. Then the second person chooses a present, and can keep it, or trade it for the first person’s gift. And so it goes until a gift has been traded about  3 times, or everyone has something they are happy with.  That’s difficult because there are always some really bad gifts.  I’m told this year’s edition of Dirty Santa was quite civil compa...