I grew up in Tulsa. Having family in Houston and Kansas meant hours upon hours of highway time in my childhood and I can remember being fascinated by the truck stops as a kid - - the diners, the treasure troves of souvenirs, the ubiquitous pecan logs - - and the inexplicably warm sense of community in a place filled with transients.
This piece brought back a lot of great memories, thanks.
What a welcome antidote to the more poisonous postings of so many insipid Facebook friends of mine. Thanks, Dave - for the breath of fresh air in a media maze filled with garbage.
Well, if there's one thing my liberal friends have taught me, it's that ANY statistical imbalance between sexes or races automatically equals discrimination. So, no matter how "condemnable" they claim to find the practice, if selective abortions ARE allowed at Planned Parenthood and the majority of those procedures just happen to be performed on females, then Planned Parenthood is clearly aiding and abetting in the targeted destruction of females for no other reason but that they are female. Gee, if I were given to hyperbole, I might actually refer to this as some kind of "war on women" or something . . .
Every time I see the President at a podium any more, all I can think of is Crocodile Dundee, in the eponymous first film, sizing up the tv in his hotel room:
Lately, I try to set aside anything cheap and expendable so I can tinker with it later - - when I've quelled the urge to kill it with a hammer. The autopsy's usually educational and I've even made one repair (which still mystifies me, since I had 2 leftover parts).
It helps that I had a great drama teacher who taught us all construction/painting/wiring basics. MY "DIY" peeve is that I still can't cook or sew on a button, thanks in part to those who sought to empower me by driving the "sexist" Home Ec. classes out of my schools. Thanks, ladies. Now the kitchen's the only room in my house where I feel powerless and frustrated.
When these "simpletons" send their hard earned dollars in this actor's general direction, does the actor view that as proof of their ignorance or just momentary enlightement?
I've only been through Kansas two or three times, and was surprised that it was in color since all I had to go on was a certain movie... · Aug 20 at 4:58am
Actually, according to my East Coast experts-on-all-things-Red-State, there ARE rare sightings of elightened people, "stuck" out there in Hicksville. Some have gone native, but a brave few are still trying to drag their states, kicking & screaming, into the 21st century. (Hey, all my kinfolk got ejjicated and lernt to use tools, so anything's possible.)
That said, some old-timers do hate change. They were dead set against colorizing Kansas at first, but once they saw how nice it looked, most of them came around.
I do wish a trip to the central states could make my east coast friends more centrist, but they only seem capable of seeing & hearing whatever shores up their preconceptions.
According to an actor I know, who returned from a tour last week, the entire middle swath of the U.S. is populated by nothing but sweet simpletons and some toothless extras from "Deliverance." When I reminded him that I'm an Okie, he congratulated me - - for being smart enough to get out.
"You know," I said, "when I decided to move here, my grandparents were the only ones against it. But I couldn't really blame them - - totally insulated, surrounded by like-minded people, suspicious of anyone who thought or looked differently than they did . . . . You understand that, right? Because you sound just like them."
Btw, Dave, if you ever roll through the hometown of said grandparents - Salina, Kansas - do NOT roll back out again without a bag of burgers from the Cozy Inn. Trust me.
Well, maybe I'm a bad person too, but the first thing I noticed in the NY Post photos of Ryan's vigil was how stoic all the women looked. Holding candles at a safe distance from placid faces, their sorrow was betrayed solely through the out-sized pouting of impossibly full lips.
How weird is it that one whose pointless passing occasioned such mourning is the same man who made it so difficult for his friends to express it?
Re: Life On The Move
I grew up in Tulsa. Having family in Houston and Kansas meant hours upon hours of highway time in my childhood and I can remember being fascinated by the truck stops as a kid - - the diners, the treasure troves of souvenirs, the ubiquitous pecan logs - - and the inexplicably warm sense of community in a place filled with transients.
This piece brought back a lot of great memories, thanks.