Have you ever walked into a place of worship and felt… well, underwhelmed? Not angry or disrespectful, mind you, but just sort of… meh. Like walking into an IKEA showroom where all the furniture is white and gray and arranged by some committee that’s never actually lived in a home. I remember once my wife […]

My old hardware store was the best classroom in town. Not for book-learnin’, mind you, but for real-life character buildin’. I remember this one fella, Timmy, bright-eyed and full of fire, came in lookin’ for a hammer. Figured he’d be fixin’ his bike or somethin’. Turns out, he was tryin’ to help his daddy hang […]

You’ve got that little gremlin in your gut, the one whispering all those “what ifs,” haven’t you? I know the look. I’ve seen it on my customers’ faces when they used to walk into my store, trying to decide whether to buy that new leaf blower or just keep sweeping their porch for the rest […]

Many a time I’d walk into my old hardware store, back when a man’s word was his bond and a dollar went further than it does now, and see a fella wringing his hands about the stock market. I’d slide him a cup of coffee, lean on the counter, and say, “Son, you’re trying to […]

My wife and I used to have a storage unit. Not one of those little ones – oh no, we had the big one. The kind where you could park a small car if you were brave enough (and desperate enough). We called it “The Black Hole” because once something went in, it never came […]

My granddaddy always used to say that if you want to know how strong your roof is, you don’t just walk on it in sunny weather. You’ve got to let some wind and rain blow against it for a spell. See where the weak spots are. And I reckon that’s a mighty fine way to […]

I was in the middle of a fine-tuning a lawnmower engine at my old hardware store when a young fella, maybe twenty-five years old with a laptop under his arm, came strolling up. He looked like he’d just walked off the set of some Silicon Valley show. He said, “You’re Bojangles, right? My dad told […]

I was standin’ in my old hardware store one Saturday mornin’, talkin’ to a young fella about fixin’ up his truck. He was a good kid, smart as a whip, but he had that look in his eye – the one that says you’re just killin’ time until the “real” life starts. “I’m just savin’ […]

Every now and then, my granddaughter will come home from Sunday school with a question that can stop a grown man in his tracks. It was during one of our Saturday morning pancake flips that she looked up at me with those big, curious eyes and asked, “Pop-Pop, what’s it like to be dead?” I […]