Smith: Pumpkin soup

Where I grew up, life was centered around “making do.” You never threw anything away. Your mother could make clothes out of flower sacks and sofa cushions from seed sacks. Crocker sacks were used for many things, and you patched them up when they became battered and kept on using them.

Rich: The Tam

In our kitchen, the large round table is often embarrassingly messy, covered with mail, packages, newspapers, and magazines. Try as I might, I cannot keep it cleaned off because the amount of daily mail we receive is astounding, sometimes six inches high.

Yarbrough: Visiting Iraq with Georgia’s 48th

Eighteen years ago this week, I ventured off to Iraq to report on the brave men and women of Georgia’s 48th Brigade Combat Team, located in an accurately named area of that country, the Triangle of Death. It is thought the Garden of Eden was located somewhere in that general area, too.

Smith: Contour Coke

In those days when I started observing what was going on around me, I noticed that there were several people in small towns who had enviable status in their communities. There was the doctor and the dentist, naturally.

Rich: The ugly shirts

When Tink came South, toting all his worldly possessions, included in the myriad boxes were some of the ugliest shirts I’d ever seen. Until Tink began to happily pull the beloved plaid shirts from storage, I don’t believe I had ever looked at a man’s shirt and thought, “Yuck.

Letter to the Editor: Foster and Hersey both on the right side for the lake area

I find it interesting that in 2018, when short-term rentals were voted on in Putnam County, both Commissioners Alan Foster and Steve Hersey were the only commissioners voting no.

Letter to the Editor: City expenses seem excessive

Dear Editor, I was surprised by some of the City of Greensboro's budget amounts published in last week's Lake Oconee News. In case you missed it: $250,000 for a street sweeper, $136,500 salary plus $43,000 benefits for the new city manager, and $2,000,000 in police services.

Yarbrough: On talking ‘Southern’

I just had to call Skeeter Skates with the news. As many of you know, Skeeter is the owner/ operator of Skeeter Skates Tree Stump Removal and Plow Repair in Ryo, Georgia.

Smith: Remembering Jim Jordan

A close friend from my high school years passed away in the last fortnight, and I’m ‘hurtin'. With a busy schedule, almost overwhelming in the fall, I hardly have had time to grieve, but his smiling face has appeared often in my consciousness as I have gone about my daily routine lately.

Bill Curry: still a class act

Tink and I attended a holiday dinner party, preceded by a cocktails, in a fancy high rise hotel in Atlanta. The event was to celebrate the newly released catalog of Mercer University Press, the publisher, which I have taken to calling the best publisher in America today.