I have been blogging for 10 years this month. I can’t figure out the exact day I really started because I began “blogging” using Geocities-hosted web pages that I slapped up on my old (dead) domain, theology-and-geometry.com. The Wayback Machine used to keep a bunch of my content from that site archived, but I’ve noticed over the years the amount that it indexes continues to dwindle, and now you can’t even really get past the…
Once upon a time the mall in Antioch was the hip shit. I know because I purchased basically every Christmas present there between 2000 and 2004. At some point after I graduated and moved to Memphis, the mall fell into some hard times and reported gang activity, and it closed down. Which is pretty surprising; it was a bustling area back in the day. The mall is open again, and it’s rebranded as Global Mall…
It’s 10 p.m. and I’m sitting at a blue plastic table, sipping a canned Coke. I’m surrounded by banks of whirring silver washing machines, and I’ve figured out that by sitting at this table, I can feel the blasts of cold air from the AC. It’s a nice counter to the heat radiating off all these dryers. This is the Wash Tub Coin Laundry, open 25 hours, according to a sign on the side of…
They’re from the late ’80s, when my brother and sister and I would leave our boombox on record for hours on end, until the tapes would run out. They are packed with preciousness and hilarity. I have fuzzy memories of making some of these recordings in our old house, perched on a bunk bed with the bedside lamp on, a blanket hanging from the top for some privacy. My mom let me hear some snippets…
I caught wind on Twitter that Chipper Jones is retiring. I haven’t kept up very much with Chipper or baseball in general for many years, but back in seventh or eighth grade, I fell hard for Chipper. I just happened to see his face flit across the TV during the game and I was instantly in love. He had that easy boyish grin that always hooks me. I watched the game to find out his…
When the Japan quake and tsunami hit, I started thinking about two Japanese girls I used to be pen pals with in grade school. Girls? Yikes. They’d be old ladies like I am now. I couldn’t conjure up the name of one of the girls, but the other’s name has stuck with me my whole life: Hitomi Imanaka. I remember the stationery she’d use when she wrote me: It was etched with one of those…
As the pickers rifle through dusty junk in dilapidated barns with corrugated metal roofs, I see an entire way of life that has all but evaporated.
I don’t remember how I heard about them but I was in high school, trying to scavenge for what bits of cool I could (I wore Walmart knockoffs of Airwalks until I could weasel my way into a real pair) when I heard about the Toadies. One day I found myself with my grandmother at the Old Hickory Mall in Jackson, in Camelot Music (which is now FYE, I think), with Rubberneck in hand, heading…
Sometimes I wish I could get back the outlook on life I had when this album was spinning nonstop in my car in high school. I thought I had things figured out. That was a long, long time before I realized that I will never have much of anything figured out. Anything.
This is the one family heirloom that my sister and I might actually eventually fight over. We have always called it “the umbrella chair,” but I think it’s actually called a canopy chair. This chair always kept a prominent spot in my mother’s mother’s house (trailer) while I was growing up. Snagging a spot in this chair during family gatherings was always a tough job, as everyone always wanted to sit in it. Its red…
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