Opinion

My three brothers sat together on the couch on steamy summer afternoons and swayed back and forth in a lazy rhythm. School had ended a month earlier, and they’d done everything fun they could imagine. They were bored.

In April 1987, I was driving late at night on an isolated road in the Missouri Ozarks on my way to turkey hunt. Suddenly, around a bend in the highway, I encountered a roadblock being manned by three state troopers. I stopped, got out of my truck and the police did an exhaustive search of…

This year’s turkey season was full of all kinds of different experiences. I shot and killed. I shot and missed. I witnessed lots of gobblers strutting just out of range and others close enough, but just behind me. There were four jakes that constantly came to my decoy party and would stay until I ran…

It is snake season again. And fittingly enough, I am reading another snake book, “Slither” by Stephan S. Hall. One of the issues discussed in the book is how some humans have the ability to see snakes and react without even thinking about it. I definitely fit into that category. Years ago, I was turkey…

It’s National Bathroom Reading Week. The first full week in June is set aside to commemorate the educational value of bathroom “literature.” I don’t know about your family, but “War and Peace” has never graced the top of our tank. No encyclopedias. Not a single book with an index. And even though we’ve learned lots…

You may think that sitting in the deer woods or on the river is boring. It’s anything but boring. When the sun comes up, the community of animals, fish, and insects go to work. The night shift is going home, and the day shift is making their way to the job at hand. It’s another…

Senior high school students have been doing it for decades. At the end of their final year, the class concocts a few elaborate, annoying, sometimes funny ways to mark their exit. Well. We who are truly Seniors—as in, AARP eligible—should consider doing the same. As a demographic, we are not the most popular group on…

When a convicted felon goes to jail for the commission of a particularly heinous crime, such as child molestation, and the length of the sentence seems too light for the crime, how often do you hear that once these perpetrators get to prison, the other inmates will “make things right” and “do what needs to…

Tim introduced Jonathon and I to sight fishing last year, during a crappie fishing trip. Then, we only used that method for a few hours. This year’s trip was two days of this technique. And after those two days, we had nearly 100 fish in our cooler. While sight fishing has a few nuances, our…

My grandmother died when I was a little girl. She is buried at a cemetery in my hometown. Since we lived right across the street, Mom took me to visit the gravesite often. She held my hand as we trotted across the highway in front of the cemetery; her other hand held a clump of…