The Original Blog

I've been wondering lately which one of my kids is going to catch the music bug. Or if any of them will. I was about 8 years old (Wyatt's age) when I caught the bug. I remember a Christmas around that time when I got two albums, Elton John's Greatest Hits and Neil Diamond's Greatest Hits. I wore those albums out! And my aunt Nan loaned me a stack of albums and said that one day I'd thank her. I can't remember the exact albums, but I know one was Frank Zappa. One was the Rolling Stones. I believe there was a Zeppelin and a Grateful Dead. When I first got into music, it was all vinyl. There was a local music shop in Fayetteville called Paradise Records. They also had tapes. Then one day these things called CDs appeared. The CD section was tiny at first. And my first CD was Huey Lewis and the News 'Sports.' But that section quickly grew and before you knew it, the record section was almost non-existent. We used to go to the record shop all the time. Back th...

  Now for some thoughts about bars and bartending, which I did for 25 years. BIG disclaimer: these are my opinion. They're opinions based on a ton of experience on both sides of the bar. But please don't take them as fact. Within the hierarchy of the restaurant, the bartender is right behind the chef at the very top. Both the chef and the bartender are responsible for creating things. Both should be expertly skilled. And both are the reasons that guests come to the restaurant. I got my first bartending gig in 1998. I attended a bartending school which the BIGGEST waste of time and money. I'll explain why shortly. My first gig was at the Angus Barn. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I had never bartended a day in my life. But their hiring philosophy was to hire good people (which they couldn't train) and then train those good people to do what they needed to do. I was there for two years. I got better with each shift. Looking back I realize that I was awful. A...

  Father’s day 2025. This is my 9th Father's Day as a dad. It is my 52nd Father’s Day having a father. And I’ll tell y’all one thing, it is a much different day now that it’s also about me. It puts everything in a much different perspective. It lets me contemplate this fatherhood trip in a larger context and for the first time in my life, I get to see the world through my father’s eyes. I can’t begin to tell you what it is like to become a parent for the first time. This post isn’t about spewing cliches that we’ve all heard 1,000 times. Y’all get it. Parenthood changes you. So many little things you’d never expect. I’ll address those in a later post perhaps. The one change that I’ve found most profound is how becoming a father has completely changed my memories of childhood. Every single memory I have of my childhood is now seen through the eyes of a father. I can still see the events from the eyes of the younger me, but standing above those young eyes is the older me, the father, ...