Back Home Again

“I’m not sure when bungee cords were invented, but they weren’t around when I was a kid, and I think my life would be pretty meaningless without them.”

“I make it a point to encourage others to be helpful, especially when it gets me out of a really disagreeable task.”

“That Kelsea decided to get married in Danville and not Georgia makes me love her all the more, but then I always look favorably upon people who save me from driving a thousand miles.”

“I tell my nephew and his friends the story of My Great Hike often, hoping they might be moved by my dogged determination. Truth be told, though, I sense in them a disdain for my story, as if it were made up.”

“Young people don’t understand that if death cleaning is to ever take hold in our country, they must do their part and take our crap. Otherwise, the whole system breaks down.”

“Facebook allows us to hang on the words of someone half a world away, known only to us by binary code, while ignoring the spouse across the table.”

“Every rider thinks his bike is the best, but would never say so. Except perhaps the owners of Triumph Bonnevilles, but only because it’s true.”

“I’ve tried both working and not, and prefer employment, so long as I can pick the job. Sometimes my wife picks my tasks for me, and I don’t care for that nearly as much.”

“I’ve known enough mothers to know they’re not all good, no matter what Hallmark says. I took my mother’s virtues for granted in the early years, though as time passed, I realized she was a keeper.”

“If Walmart designed a tree, the Bradford pear is what it would look like.”

“In this polarized age, I don’t suspect a Republican or Democrat would lend the other a hand, let alone a printing press. But it was different back then, before talk radio gave the least stable among us a microphone.”

Getting hungry on the road? Visit one of these five drive-in diners for a blast to the past.

“We’re not nervous about the large audience. We’re nervous about the history of the song and the expectations that the people of Indiana have for that moment.”

Perfectly decent human beings, like me for instance, are made to feel like losers for driving a 1999 Toyota Corolla.

Responses to Philip Gulley’s opinion column