When I was in kindergarten, the school bus didn’t go where I lived. It would stop in the curve on the red dirt road where the massive old cedar tree stood. My brother and I would get off the bus and start walking the quarter mile white dirt road to Nanny and Granddaddy’s. Their small brick house stood at the end of the white dirt road, hidden by a thick screen of trees that bordered broad fields of tall tobacco. Continue reading
#GrowingUpCountry
Why I Carry

I have an Alien Gear holster… VERY nice rig. My carry piece is a S&W MP Shield 9mm
I sit down and I feel it push into my side a little, digging just above where my hip joins my body. When I stand, I can feel the weight pulling at my belt, trying to bring my pants down. Even with a good quality holster setup, there’s no way to put a pistol on your hip that’s really “comfortable.” You know it’s there, and you know why it’s there, and there’s nothing comfortable or cool about it. So why do it at all? Why go through the trouble, the expense, and the stress of applying for the permit, attending the class, getting the certification at the range, and the fingerprints at the Sheriff’s office all to carry around something that’s heavy, at times painful, and increasingly socially taboo? Continue reading
The Smell of Tobacco
The sense of smell has the strongest direct connection to long term memory. In fact, there’s literally a direct connection from the olfactory cortex that receives the incoming signals to the hippocampus where long term memory is generated. All of the other senses have to be processed, filtered, examined and catalogued first, and then the important bits are selected out and sent on to the hippocampus to create long-term memories, but not smell. This is one reason that even a faint whiff of a familiar scent can unlock a long forgotten memory. Continue reading