Recently I visited a friend in the hospital. He was having brain surgery (he came out fine, except he now claims not to recognize me—which I think is pure opportunism on his part) and was expected to be in the operating room four or five hours. I knew I’d want a pipe or two [...]
My childhood holiday memories are filled with ghost stories. The family usually gathered at my grandfather’s farmhouse, with the aunts and uncles in the kitchen and Grandpa and the 10 Tobys (all of Grandpa’s dogs were named Toby) in the family room with all the young cousins. Grandpa would tell his horrifying stories as shadows [...]
A recent brush with tornados here in North Carolina made me realize it was time to stop procrastinating and make sure my pipes were insured, so I called my insurance agent, Bill. It took a few minutes to convince him I was serious. “So these are wooden instruments,” he said, “that you fill with tobacco [...]
It was a typical Saturday. I’d been meandering through the house smoking a pipe and carrying a toolbox, trying to look like I was accomplishing something with door hinges or stair rails so my wife wouldn’t give me a real assignment, like digging out the driveway’s drainage pipe or doing battle with the Screaming Peruvian [...]
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