When my son first left for Scotland just before the fall of 2018 to follow his dream of studying at the University of Stirling, I just knew he’d be terribly homesick for everything about America, including his family. He was … for about 27 seconds. He’s fallen in love with the place. The Scots have stolen my son. He’s happy, though, and getting a good education, and that’s all I really care about. It’s not my life to live. But […]
Flashback column: “America will sing again” (September 2001)
(Note: This is the column I wrote back in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks. It’s also in “The Best of Chris Johnson, Volume I,” available at this link.) It’s so easy to lose perspective in this life. I spent Monday getting my wisdom teeth cut out and then spent about five hours that night at the emergency room after an unexplained fainting spell. I didn’t care, because I was more worried about my stepmother, who was in surgery that day […]
College sure has changed, and I think that might be a good thing
This past Friday, I participated in a community fair for incoming freshmen at the college I allegedly attended 31 years ago, Georgia Southwestern. (I’m told I have a record there, though I’m not sure if it’s in the administration building or with campus police.) I was there to promote The Fuller Center for Housing, where these new students could put in some volunteer hours or just serve their community — here at home or around the world. I was advertising […]
Going hot and heavy into the redneck romance novel business
Some folks think that the reason Americans seem to get collectively stupider each year is that they read less and less. I, however, suspect it has more to do with decaffeinated coffee. People, though, are still reading. Most kids are excited about reading until you hand them a dull textbook and kill their interest in words forever. Folks read posts on Facebook with titles like, “11 Different Uses for Used Toothpicks” or “Which Little Rascal Are You?” (I’m Spanky.) And, […]
I’ll be perfectly happy as an old man in an old truck
This past weekend my wife and I broke down and traded in her cool little car for a big ol’ SUV with a third-row seat. We’ve got a couple of grandkids now, and we needed a better place to transport them than the luggage rack, which tends to make police all talkative and nosy at traffic stops. It’s not a new car, but it’s new to us. It comes with all kinds of fancy technology that my wife is learning […]
I’ll have a cup of Bacon without the Carly Rae Jepsen, please
I love the sport of baseball, even though I kinda gave up on the Braves after 40 years of loving them when they abandoned a perfectly good ballpark for a taxpayer fleecing in Cobb County. I tried to replace them with the Chicago Cubs, but it didn’t work. I like the Cubs. I just don’t love them. I grew up with about 13 channels, one of them TBS that showed the Braves all the time, and the other WGN that […]
I came for lunch, not a staring contest
I have many pet peeves when it comes to restaurants. I don’t like to eat in a place so dark that you have to use a flashlight to read the menu. I don’t like loud restaurants with bad music or acoustics that carry every conversation through the whole place. I loathe a restaurant telling me what sides come with an entree instead of letting me choose. And I especially hate paying more to get less. I have a theory that […]
Honey, I shrunk the town
A recent report from the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that a third of Georgia’s small towns — it considers “small” any community under 10,000 — lost population in the past year. I don’t really have a reason to question the report, although I don’t know exactly how the Bureau goes about its estimating business in such a matter. “Hey, Larry, does it seem to you that Roopville just ain’t the bustling place it once was?” “Indeed, Sally. I estimate they’ve […]