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In the summer of 1971 I made a life-changing decision.  I chose to drop out of college and attend Radio-TV-Film school in frigid Minneapolis, Minnesota.  For the first time, I would be in a place where I knew absolutely no one, far away from family, friends and familiar surroundings.  

I will never forget the feeling I had watching my parents drive away, leaving me alone in this big city, after helping me find a room to rent. I didn’t own a car. Didn’t own much of anything except a small portable black and white TV and a few changes of clothing.

I felt incredibly lonely and a bit scared.  But shortly after school began I met two classmates named Steve and Dan.  Steve was from upstate Minnesota and Dan was from Iowa.  It didn’t take long to sense they had the same off beat sense of humor as me, and we began to cut up and joke around together. It was like we hit it off immediately, quickly becoming buddies. Best buddies. Before long we were sharing an apartment together.  The school’s program was a one year curriculum, and during that year we were the three musketeers, doing everything together, or at least as much as three broke young guys in a big town could afford to do.

We went to cheap movies, threw the frisbee around at the park, found free outdoor concerts to hang out at, and existed on White Castle hamburgers. Sometimes we would stay up all night playing poker, using Cheerios as currency. But mostly we spent endless hours excitedly listening to local radio deejays and watching TV newscasts, studying and discussing how they wielded their craft. We were so pumped up about doing that sort of thing as a career, sharing our dreams about someday becoming big time broadcasting personalities. Our ambitions bonded us closely together. The world would be our oyster. It was one of the best years of my life.

But time marches on, and upon graduation we vowed to stay in touch forever, as we headed off to different parts of the country to begin our media careers.  We found that remaining close was easier said than done. In those days staying in touch required more effort than it does now.  There was no internet, no smart phones, no text messaging or email.  You either had to pay for a long distance phone call, or take the time to sit down and write a letter. We managed to pull it off for a couple years, but eventually we all got married, started raising kids, moved around to different cities, you know how it goes.  Communication dwindled and eventually dried up. 

In the blink of an eye, 44 years had gone by since I had seen or talked to them last.  Once retired, I was determined to track them down, anxious to catch up, to learn where their lives and careers had taken them. Finding them wouldn’t be a problem I thought, not in this wired up age.  I scoured the internet, searching under every name, phrase and location I could think of.  But no luck.  It was like they had disappeared.  There didn’t seem to be any digital footprint of them anywhere.  Then, one day, I must have stumbled upon the right search phrase.  A link on Dan popped up on my screen. 

Ecstatic, I immediately clicked on it. The article that came up on my laptop caused me to go numb all over.  It was an obituary.  Dan had died in 2003 of cancer.  The article said he had been working as the morning show deejay at a country radio station in Madison, South Dakota.  That brought a melancholy smile to my face. That was so Dan. He loved country music and I’ll bet that was his dream job. He must have been popular, because the local newspaper had a huge write-up on his passing. He was just 47 years old.  We hadn’t spoken in over four decades, yet when I learned of his passing I felt as though a part of my life died with him. 

I’ve never located any information on Steve.  I pray he is still out there somewhere, and that life has treated him kindly.  I hope all his dreams came true, as most of mine did.

Good friends are a special gift from God.  If you are blessed to have them, don’t ever let those relationships wither away.  There will come a time, all too quickly, when they cannot be retrieved.

I have good news.  In this age of huge, urban, metropolitan areas soaking up all the people and dictating the culture, I am pleased to report that Small Town, USA is alive and well.  I know this because Sharon and I recently took a nine hour car trip to Branson, Missouri for a little vacation break.  Branson was awesome, but I will write about that another day. 

The most intriguing part of the journey was the drive through the Ozark Mountains.  A lovely romp on US Highways 412 and 65 through breathtaking autumn colors and majestic mountain vistas.  Miles and miles of uncivilized countryside, interrupted every so often by tiny communities that have somehow managed to survive the epic migration to the big cities. 

The names of these little towns have real character.  Sharon and I enjoy trying to guess the stories behind them. Some are easy.  For example, Blue Eye (population 46) must have reflected the facial features of its founder.  Rose Bud (population 494) clearly came from the gardening habits of somebody important.  Curves (no population listed) is an obvious reference to the zig zagging roads up and down the hillsides.  Marked Tree (population 2,286) is pretty self explanatory.   

But there are many town names that are more enigmatic.  Yellville (population 1,178) must be very noisy.  Gassville (population 2,171) was either named after the number of filling stations, or local folks who ate too much spicy food.  I thought maybe Bellefonte (population 411) was named after Harry, the famous singer, until I realized it’s a different spelling.  Lead Hill (population 274) might refer to metal discovered in the ground.  There must have been a lot of burning going on in Ash Flat (population 1,137). 

My favorite town name was Smackover (population 1,630) where discipline must be very strict.  Then there were a few villages where I don’t even want to know the name origins, such as Weiner (population 647) and Bald Knob (population 2,522).  We were impressed by the little burg of Valley Springs, whose welcome sign stated its population was just 134, yet they had their own high school.  The school building was roughly the size of the Chick-Fil-A in Trussville.   

Traveling through these rural hamlets can make you work up an appetite.  We stopped in Bee Branch, Arkansas and checked out a gas station called Doublebee’s Gas It & Grab It.  Best fried chicken in all of the Ozarks I reckon.  Sometimes our trip seemed downright biblical.  We saw road signs directing us to places such as Canaan, Judea, Egypt and Palestine.  One town had a shop called “Guitars, Guns & Knives”.  Sounds like the title of an old country song.   

We noticed the “hub” of each of these wide spots in the road centered around four basic things.  A bank, a gas station, a Dollar General, and a Baptist Church.  This confirms my long-held suspicion that if you have a little money, gas, food and God, you have everything you need.   

You cross a lot of creeks in these parts, and most every one has a fun name.  We went over Dead Timber Creek, Huzzah Creek, Crooked Creek and Little Mingo Creek.  My personal favorite was Hog Thief Creek.  Must have been a hangout for pig rustlers back in the day.   

When you’ve been driving through boroughs of a few hundred people for several hours, a city like Harrison (population 13,069) seems akin to New York City.  Here you find rare sites such as a movie theater, a barber shop and a furniture store.  They even had a dentist and a post office!  And a four lane street!   

The adventure coming home was a little more intense.  Have you ever been at the complete mercy of your GPS?  Out in the middle of nowhere with no clue where you are, relying solely on the directions your device is giving you?  That was our experience when the gadget told us we had to take an “alternate route” to avoid a road closure at the Tennessee border.  We kept getting diverted on to roads that became more and more remote, and eventually wound up on an unpaved gravel connection between two state highways.  Just about the time I started thinking about writing my eulogy for when our bodies would be discovered, the pavement reappeared and we were greatly relieved to see a sign welcoming us to Beaver, Arkansas.  Population 64.  The rustic, two-pump gas station was a beautiful site. And if the doors to the little Baptist Church hadn’t been locked, I would have stopped in to give thanks. 

Eventually we made it home to Trussville which I suddenly realized was many times the size of any town we had been through in the last seven days. Of course, we waited forever to make a left turn off busy Highway Eleven to get into our subdivision. 

I’ll bet they don’t have that problem in Smackover. 

(kenlassblog.net) 

He stood nervously behind the lectern in front of a large Sunday School class. He had little confidence in his ability as a speaker, and had brought a handful of note cards to help him get through it. But he knew this was a story that didn’t translate well to notes. It had to come from the heart. A story he felt compelled to share with anyone who would listen. So he had begun to seek small groups to talk to, and this was his first.

It was really the story of his entire life, but his time in front of the group was limited. So he began in the middle. It had been quite a year for him. It began with he and his wife rededicating their Christian faith in church. Shortly after, he determined to get up the courage to witness to his sister who had fallen away. He had put that off long enough. It was time. He brought her a Bible and did his best to lead her back to God. Her response was tepid at best.

In the spring he accompanied a Men on Mission group on a journey to Maryland where they were to build a new church. He had always been a skilled build-it and fix-it man, something he much preferred to public speaking. A few days into the mission, he was working on the new building when he began to feel chest pains. This wasn’t indigestion. He knew the difference. The pain kept getting worse and, though he hated to leave his fellow workers, eventually he conceded the need to be taken to a local emergency room. By coincidence, his wife happened to call him from home in Moody, Alabama just to say hello and ask how his day was going. Not so good, he replied. He then informed her he was in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. He told her not to worry. He’d been through stuff like this before. He’d be all right.

He was wrong.

Doctors determined he had a brain bleed. It wasn’t his first. He’d had them before and still carried the stent in his head to prove it. But this one was more severe. Gradually it began to shut down his bodily functions, and ultimately he fell unconscious. He had often heard stories about folks who have had near death experiences. How they saw heaven, and saw loved ones who had gone before. Saw the beauty and the peace. He had always looked forward to that journey one day, but this would turn out to be a vastly different path.

Instead he told the group he actually saw hell. He saw the lake of fire. It was real. It was burning the walls of the new church he had been working on. He felt the pain of his skin burning. He says he cried out to God, saying this was not what he had been promised by the Scripture. He pleaded to be delivered from that awful place.

When he woke up, he was in a different hospital, his head resting on a pillow that was wet from his crying tears. He was surrounded by his wife and adult kids. He had been transferred to a major facility in Baltimore in a desperate attempt to save his life. His church family had arranged flights and hotels for his loved ones to get to Maryland to be with him in his final hours. He couldn’t help noticing the doctors and nurses appeared surprised he had awakened. It was clear everyone expected him to be dead.

Not only was he very much alive, but he experienced a remarkably quick recovery. Within days he was on a plane with his family heading home. His story could have ended there. That, in itself, was evidence enough, he thought, of God’s power and influence in his life. But the thing he believed most miraculous was waiting for him when he got home.

Upon arriving, he was contacted by his sister. She told him she had been praying mightily for him. That she had been overcome with the feeling that Satan was punishing him because of what he was trying to do for her. She said her faith had been rekindled by his safe return.

It was all an incredible spiritual revelation to him. Over the next few months he felt God leading him to find audiences for his experience. He had a message to deliver. Prayer works. Faith will be rewarded.

His time was up. He finished his talk, thanked the group for the opportunity, gathered up his note cards and began to walk toward the door. There was silence for a moment, and thoughts went racing through his mind. Would anybody believe it? Be inspired by it? Did he tell it well enough?

Suddenly, the people in the room exploded into applause and expressions of gratitude. A big smile of relief rippled across his face. He realized then it truly was a story worth telling. No matter how nervous, how uncomfortable he was telling it, the effort was worth it. Faith really is rewarded.

Word would get around quickly. There would be more lecterns, more groups to stand in front of. More note cards. More people who needed to hear.

That would be okay. He was ready now.

Driving through your neighborhood these days may bring you to a startling realization. Halloween has gotten big. I mean that figuratively and literally. The number and size of Halloween lawn decorations have exploded. I dare say it has begun to rival Christmas in popularity.

Which I am not at all sure is a good thing. While the themes of Christmas are generally positive, happy and even spiritual, the concepts of Halloween seem to be getting darker and more graphic. It was not always so. Lawn decor used to be laden with friendly, white-sheeted ghosts, smiling pumpkins and an occasional benign witch who never did anything more threatening than stir a cauldron.

But these days bigger is all the rage. Not to mention scarier. Giant skeletons and monsters with jagged fangs and claws, wearing evil grins, some of them leaning forward as if about to pounce on you. Massive spider webs with humongous spiders heading down toward you. We’ve come a long way from Casper the Friendly Ghost.

It’s not cheap to go this route. I saw a nine foot, animated grim reaper listed on one website for $209. A twelve foot giant skeleton had a price tag of $99.98. That’s a lot of cash to turn your front yard into a scene from Friday the 13th. But it’s a price more and more folks are willing to pay for the opportunity to send a chill through the neighborhood kids as they pass by. Adults too.

America has become obsessed with being scared. Have you checked out the movies lately? The horror genre has never been more popular, even when it’s not Halloween season. TV shows like The Walking Dead are among the most watched. I stumbled upon a website titled “The 20 Best Horror Shows on TV Now”. I didn’t even know there were twenty horror shows on TV.

What is it about being frightened that seems so appealing? Psychologists say getting scared out of your wits releases a hormone in your body called dopamine, which they claim is stimulating. They also say the feeling of emerging safely from a terrifying experience, such as watching a horror flick, gives one a sense of accomplishment. The same thrill you might get from conquering a high speed roller coaster.

This is not true for everybody. I prefer to chicken out of scary situations. I’d rather get my adrenalin rush watching my favorite football team score a touchdown, or hiding behind the drapes while playing hide and seek with my grandkids, only to discover they had long since lost interest in the game and have gone outside to play. Yes, that makes me eminently dull and boring. But at least I don’t have to worry about crapping my pants while watching some serial killer ravage the suburbs.

I’m trying really hard not to have the grumpy old curmudgeonly “get off my lawn” take on this. I get that it’s all supposed to be in good fun. Kids like to be scared, so long as they know it’s controlled. But I do wish the season could evolve into something a bit less gory and a little more playful. I truly appreciate our local churches who take the edge off of the creepiness by putting on fall festivals that emphasize more wholesome adventures.

Anyway, I hope your biggest problem this Halloween is buying way too much candy, only to discover the kids don’t trick or treat in your neighborhood anymore. Meaning, of course, you have to eat it all.

Now that’s really scary.

Hello. My name is Ken. And I’m a pachydermophobic. That’s an irrational fear of elephants. But I don’t think it’s irrational, and you may not either after you have read my story.

I didn’t realize I had pachydermophobia until recent years. You see, my grandkids love to visit the Birmingham Zoo, and I enjoyed going with them. But I’ve had to stop. I was okay watching the lion. No problem with the giraffe. The zebra was beautiful. Even the snakes didn’t bother me. But when we got to the elephants, my heartbeat accelerated, I got fidgety and I just wanted to move on.

It’s not as though the elephants at the Birmingham zoo looked particularly threatening. Quite benign actually. Mostly they were just trying to cool off by using their trunks to toss water over their hides, or scoop straw into their mouths. My grands love watching them, and would do so all day, but I found myself trying to tug the kids away, bribing them with an offer of ice cream from the concession stand.

Silly you say? Ah, but you didn’t experience what I did all those years ago.

It was the late 1970’s and I was working as a local TV sports anchor at a station in Tallahassee, Florida. The circus had come to town and was looking to drum up publicity to advertise their shows. As a stunt, they invited local media folks to come and participate in an elephant race, knowing we would bring cameras and use it on the air. Free promotion. The event was to take place across the parking lot of the biggest shopping mall in town. My boss thought it would be a bit undignified to send his news anchors, but sports guys are, apparently, expendable, so he sent me.

The spectacle was scheduled early in the morning before the stores in the mall opened so the parking lot would be empty. I arrived with a videographer to find a surprisingly large number of spectators gathered around a pack of about six elephants lined up behind a makeshift starting line. I should have had misgivings when the circus people, even before introducing themselves, hurriedly presented me with a waiver to sign, absolving them from any liability.

Oh well, I thought. This will be fun. I pictured it would be kind of like those pony rides you take as a child, where the trainer leads you down the path, firmly holding the reins of the horse, walking at a leisurely, comfortable pace. As they showed me my ride, his name was Jumbo, I quickly realized this was no pony. You don’t really appreciate how massively huge an adult elephant is until you are standing at its feet. They used a hoist to lift me up to the animal’s shoulders. There was no saddle, no reins, nothing to hang on to. Jumbo was bare backed. Nobody from the circus seemed concerned about this, so I wasn’t either. After all, it would be just a gentle bounce as we toddled across the pavement.

My videographer set up on the sidewalk next to the finish line, about fifty yards away. The plan was for me to fun-lovingly smile and wave at the camera as I went by. Once all the media types had loaded up, a circus clown with a megaphone counted down from ten to start the race.

When the countdown reached zero, I saw a trainer off to the side snap a whip. Suddenly, Jumbo took off as though he was being chased through the Serengeti by a hungry lion. It was only then that I came to the horrifying realization that this was, indeed, a real race. I was bouncing around like a fishing pole bobber in lake waves. The back of Jumbo’s neck was so broad that I couldn’t wrap my arms around it to hold on, and it felt inevitable that I would eventually slip off to the side. Even more terrifying, Jumbo had about a two length lead on the other elephants, meaning that when I did fall off, I was going to be hopelessly trampled by the rest of the herd.

I have never been so absolutely paralyzed with fright in my whole life. I really felt as though I was going to die. And there it would be, captured on video for the world to see. Or maybe it would be so graphic that media outlets wouldn’t even show it. It would become one of those bootleg video clips you have to find on the dark web.

The actual race took only a few seconds. I really couldn’t tell. I was just barely conscious. I guess I held on somehow, and when they lifted me down off Jumbo, I was numb all over. Couldn’t feel my legs. I must have been white as a sheet because everyone seemed to be having a good laugh at my countenance. My videographer and I would later watch the video, and what was supposed to be a happy, playful wave to the camera was anything but. My eyes were as big as half dollars and the look on my face was one of absolute shock. It was so disconcerting, my producer decided not to use that part of the video on the air, instead just showing my getting on the elephant and the start of the race. I took the next day off.

Well, that was about 45 years ago. It’s taken awhile, but I’m better now. I have my pachydermophobia under control. Although, the other day, I was reading Horton Hears a Who to my grandson, and I did break out into a sweat.

There he is. The beach chair rental guy. He struts around with his sun bleached curly hair and his biceps. He thinks he’s such hot stuff with his flat stomach and bright orange swim trunks with the white stripes down the side. He always wears that brown panama hat………and he hates me.

No, really. He hates me. He must hate me, because every time we rent a tandem set of chairs from him he puts us in the worst seats on the beach. It’s become a dubious tradition. Every early September Sharon and I are finally able to get away for a few days to our favorite Orange Beach condo. And when I say we go to the beach, I mean that literally. We head to the waterfront and park our weary bodies on a lounger and watch the waves roll in. That’s all we do. We’re not there to shop, or visit the water park, or eat seafood, or swim in the pool, or go fishing.

We just want to relax under an umbrella, dig our toes in the sand, and let the rolling waves lull us to sleep. Our idea of activity is trying to read the banners trailing behind the advertising helicopters. They usually urge you to eat at the “world famous” local restaurant. Virtually every dining establishment on the beach claims to be world famous for something. Crabs, shrimp, calimari, sea shells that look like Barry Manilow, whatever it is, they are world famous for it.

No matter to us. We just want to bask in the hum of the roaring surf. Being basically a cheapskate, and lazy, I never invested in my own umbrella and chairs. Seems like a lot of effort. Dragging your own gear all the way down to the sand, desperately trying to dig that hole deep enough to keep your umbrella from dislodging in the wind and impaling a bystander. Why bother? We just rent a set when we get there. Of course, that means we have to deal with the chair rental guy. Did I mention that he hates me?

First of all, he always puts us in the most distant chairs. Once, we were so far away from the shoreline, I think my smart watch shifted into Eastern time. And you can be sure he will assign us a location right behind the large family that has erected a tent roughly the size of a small industrial warehouse. We can’t see the water, but we know it must be there because of all the sea gulls trying to eat the orange peelings the kids in the tent are throwing toward us.

Every few hours the rental guy will courteously visit other chair renters and offer to reposition their umbrellas so they can remain in the shade. Meanwhile we are usually left to pick up and tote our seats, like Lewis and Clark carrying canoes across a sand bar, in relentless pursuit of the shadows.

There was one occasion when he had put us a short cab ride from the water, and shortly afterward we noticed he set up a man right on the water’s edge, way closer than the other rentals. I couldn’t help myself. I had to ask him why. He explained that the man was blind and requested to be closer so he could at least hear the ocean.

Yeah, right. I’m pretty sure I saw the blind man playing volleyball about an hour later.

Even a person as thrifty as me reaches his limit. So this year I took the plunge. I bought all our own stuff. Our own umbrella, chairs, sand drill, cupholders, and the wagon with the wide sand wheels. The whole package. After loading it all up in the condo, I may have pulled several small muscles lugging the wagon into the elevator, down the walkway, and across the sand, but it was worth it. I made it a point to cross right in front of the rental guy’s little headquarters, where he sat with his boom box and his bodybuilding magazine.

I tried to sneer at him as I went by, but there was too much sweat pouring down my forehead to make my face visible. Anyway, I set up as close to the shoreline as I could. Even the blind man couldn’t have gotten closer to the water. I collapsed into my lounger, exhausted but feeling victorious.

After a few minutes, I noticed the rental guy was drilling umbrella holes in the sand just parallel to us. Again, I couldn’t help myself. I asked him why. He said because the beach is not crowded, he can move all the rentals up closer.

Obviously, he still hates me.

Sharon and I recently made the six and a half hour journey to Williamstown, Kentucky to take in the Ark Encounter. The magnificent structure is an intriguing mix of Bible fact and artistic license. The builders call it “ark-tistic license”.

You know the story. God told Noah to build the giant boat to the size of just under two football fields. Noah and his family, and thousands of animals, survived inside of it after forty days of rain washed out all life on the planet. The Bible supplies only limited detail about what the ship looked like and how it functioned. Because of this, many regard the story of Noah and the great flood as little more than legend.

To their credit, the builders of the Kentucky ark are very up front about having to fill in the gaps. The first thing you see when you board is a series of plaques explaining how much of it is based on Scripture, and how much needed to be guessed at, based on the resources available at the time.

I had no problem with this. After all, the mission of the Ark Encounter is not so much to convince you that the story of Noah is true. It is to convince you that it can be true, that you don’t have to suspend all rational thinking to accept it as fact. As such, the builders make a reality-grounded case that Noah and his clan, given enough time, could indeed have built it, gathered the animals, and navigated the flood, as per the biblical account. The exhibit also provides ample geologic evidence that such a flood did actually take place.

Of course, there had to be a few nods and winks to modern convenience to make the structure viable as a tourist attraction. I’m pretty sure Noah didn’t have ceiling fans, elevators and Coke vending machines, not to mention Uncle Leroy’s Candy Kitchen on the second deck. No matter. The large collection of visitors had little problem separating the meaningful from the marketing.

Speaking of the crowd, I probably did as much people watching as ark observing. I was fascinated by the diversity of the visitors, in age, gender, ethnicity, everything. At various times I heard folks around me speaking languages that sounded like German, French and Spanish. We met nice travelers from New York and Illinois. There were people from every stage of life. Seniors like me, young adults bringing their small children, teenagers in groups. I saw long hair, pink hair, nose rings and full body tattoos.

There’s a punch line in there about God sending two of every kind of human to the ark, but I’ll refrain.

I saw very little boredom. There was a palpable air of excitement. Everyone wandered the decks, read the plaques, watched the videos, stared wide-eyed at the displays. There were smiles. There was reverence. There was…..something else. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Was it vindication? Or just plain relief?

Most Christians want to believe the Bible, but it’s hard to keep doubt from creeping in because of some of the fantastical improbabilities. Adam and Eve, the parting of the sea, Jonah and the whale, David and Goliath, Daniel and the lions den. Does accepting the credibility of accounts such as these require some brand of blind faith that often must ignore what appear to be scientific facts?

Maybe not. Along comes the Ark Encounter. Here we see a logical, believable, realistic, step-by-step depiction of how the story of Noah and the flood can not only be true, but likely is so.

Perhaps that was it. That’s what I saw in the faces of so many visitors. The joy one feels when you discover solid evidence that supports what you so desperately want to place your faith in.

People today hear a lot of voices coming from a lot of different directions. We all have a need to believe in something, to invest our faith in a consistent source. If you find yourself twisting in the wind of troubled waters, take a trip to the ark. It just might help you drop anchor.

So, are you worried that the ongoing Hollywood writers and actors strike will affect your favorite TV programs in the fall?

Yeah, me neither.

Most of the new shows out there are agenda-driven tripe anyway. And it’s hard to feel empathy for the Hollywood crowd. I know the great majority of them are just aspiring folk struggling to make a living, but my admittedly stereotypical vision of them pictures a hedonistic culture full of excess, addiction and immorality.

There is one facet of the strike that does grab my attention. A key item among the demands is for limits and controls on the use of artificial intelligence, commonly known as AI. It’s been riveting to me to learn of how far the technology has come. I read, for example, that AI was used to make Harrison Ford look younger in the most recent Indiana Jones movie. In fact, the innovation is now capable of cloning an entire performer and assimilating his voice. Actors are legitimately concerned that they can, and ultimately will be replaced.

AI is equally a threat to the writers. Apparently, if you were to take all the existing scripts for a popular show, say Law and Order for instance, and feed them into the system, AI can learn how the show is written, and can create new scripts for new episodes without human help. The writers want assurances that TV producers will never let this happen.

I confess I am a bit puzzled about the union strategy. Seems to me the best way to make sure computers don’t take your job is to stay on the job and continue to do it well. Wouldn’t going on strike force your employer to use the very technology you are trying to squelch? Guess I don’t understand show biz.

Anyway, it’s their problem, right? AI is not a threat to you and me…..he wrote nervously.

In truth, most of us have little awareness of how much it already affects (controls?) our lives. Those ladies with the sultry voices inside our smart phones, Siri and Alexa, set alarms, look up information, and send text messages for us. Maybe you’re scrolling through your Facebook wall and come upon an ad for a Doobie Brothers concert coming to Oak Mountain Amphitheater. You click on it just out of curiosity to see what the tickets might cost. Then, as you resume scrolling, your newsfeed suddenly is cluttered with ads for concerts of all types. Somebody, or more accurately some thing, has tracked your activity.

You turn on your TV and the screen immediately suggests the shows it thinks you want to watch. It also customizes the commercials you will see. Automated customer service machines help you solve your tech problems without speaking to a human. Your smart phone activates by recognizing your face. You can watch live video of someone at your front door, even if you are a thousand miles from home. You can put it in control of your thermostat and refrigerator. You can use it to start your car when you are not in it. Soon it will drive the car.

All of this is super great, so long as we continue to be the ones deciding how to use it. But what if, one day, we get into our self-driving car and tell it to take us to the farmers market. It knows what sort of items you usually buy there, and has calculated you can get them cheaper at the grocery store, so it decides to take you there instead. “But I don’t want to go to the grocery store!” you shout to it. “I want to go to the farmers market!” No matter. The vehicle has already decided what is best for you, and off to Publix you go.

You turn on your TV and, on a whim, decide to watch the latest episode of The Bachelor, a show you haven’t watched in years. But your TV decides this is not a program that you have been interested in, and redirects you to a rerun of Andy Griffith. You scream at your television and hurl the remote across the living room, but Andy and Barney remain on the screen.

Sound like the stuff of a corny, old sci-fi movie? Maybe, but the technology already exists to do both of those things, and more. It also occurs to me that I could feed several of my past blogs into an AI computer, and the machine could start writing my columns without me. This won’t be hard for you to discern.

If my blogs suddenly become much more clever, insightful and smart, you’ll know I didn’t write them.

It finally happened. I knew it was just a matter of time, and I’ve been dreading it. I was shopping at one of Trussville’s big box stores and, after I had gathered my purchases, I strolled over to the checkout area searching for a cashier.

There were none.

There was only a bank of self-checkout machines, accompanied by a couple of watchful employees. So, we’ve finally gotten there. The time when checkers have been all but eliminated and we have to check ourselves out. I try not to be one of those people that hates change. But I don’t think I’m going to handle this well.

For starters, can we not standardize these these things so they all handle the same stuff? One machine takes cash only. One takes credit cards only. One takes cash and credit cards. One only takes cards from Southern Baptists. Another is for Capricorns.

Then there’s the search for the bar code. I’m convinced the packagers are entertaining themselves by deliberately trying to make them as hard to find as possible. Kind of like playing a game of Where’s Waldo. After rotating my can of paint for ten minutes in a futile attempt to find the code, I am rescued by the employee monitor, who seems annoyed at my incompetence. She points out the tiny code, which is located on the bottom of the back label, partially obscured by a sticker telling me this product is helping to save the environment. I’m not certain, but I could swear I saw the employee roll her eyes at me as she walked away.

The robotic female voice in the machine tells me to remove my items from the platform and bag them, unsympathetic to the fact the bags are too small to hold anything larger than a cantaloupe. “Take your receipt” she says. Glad to. Where is it? I have this uncanny ability to choose the machine that has run out of paper.

All the while I feel the heavy gaze of the monitors, watching me intently, the way a mother watches her toddler after telling him to stay away from the wet paint on the kitchen doorway. I have this fear of accidentally forgetting to scan one of my items, and immediately being led out of the store in handcuffs. You’re not paranoid if they really are out to get you.

I blame Piggly Wiggly. Back in the early 1900’s, when grocery stores and supermarkets began to proliferate, the customers would give their shopping lists to the clerk, who would then gather your groceries, and bring them to you. But around 1916, the first Piggly Wiggly opened in Memphis, Tennessee, pioneering a radically new concept. They let the customers actually roam the aisles by themselves, gather their own items, and bring them to the checkout. It was the genesis of a nefarious plot to make the customers do more of the work, while the employees do less, making them more expendable. The experiment was so successful that in 1937 the company introduced the next step, the shopping cart. Now, not only did you have to pick out your own stuff, but you had to tote it to your car and load it.

As you can see, it was inevitable that, ultimately, the process would become complete when the customer would also have to check himself out. And here we are.

It’s not a total revolution just yet. Most stores still keep a checker or two available so that you have the option. Folks who choose to do self-checkout usually do so because they don’t want to stand in line. They feel they are saving time by doing it themselves. Want to know a secret? Studies have shown that most shoppers who have multiple items don’t get out of the store any faster using self-checkout than they do by waiting it out in the cashier line. It just seems faster because you are busy doing something.

I’m going to miss the cashiers once they’re gone for good. That friendly lady asking me if I’m having a good day, or how I like that new brand of toothpaste, or offering me a choice between paper and plastic. I’ll miss placing that wooden divider stick on the moving belt, protecting me from paying for the broccoli the lady behind me tried to sneak into my items. Little did she know I hate broccoli. It won’t be the same without arm wrestling my cart away from the aggressive bag boy, who insists on pushing it to the car, desperate to look busy so that he doesn’t get laid off.

Alas, no matter. The self-checkout is here to stay. I expect I’ll get used to it. Guess I’ll see you at the store. I’ll be the one down on my hands and knees trying to find the slot where the receipt comes out.

The Bible teaches us to love all people, and to love others as we love ourselves. But this can be very challenging, especially when it comes to those who are not like the rest of us.

I’m speaking, of course, about left-handed people.

Yes, lefties. You know who you are. The eight percent of human beings who need their own special scissors, golf clubs and spiral notebooks. The ones whose hands are always dirty because they drag them along the paper as they write something. The ones who complain that doors and refrigerators don’t open in the correct direction. In school they struggled because the desks were connected to the chairs on the wrong side.

They are different. They require certain adjustments to your lifestyle. I know this because I married a lefty. We learned, for example, that when Sharon and I go to a restaurant and sit on the same side of the table, I can never be to her left. Otherwise, by the time our meal has ended, our elbows and arms will be black and blue from banging into each other. I failed miserably at trying to show her how to swing a tennis racket or a golf club because everything is reversed.

Life hasn’t been easy for Sharon. When she was a child there was no such thing as a left-handed scissors, or at least they were very rare. She had to teach herself to cut with her opposite hand. Her grandmother insisted she hold her spoon in her right hand. Grandma’s generation thought of lefties as being defective, even handicapped. Some went so far as to believe they were possessed by an evil spirit. I’ll bet you didn’t know that the word “sinister”, which connotes evil or darkness, comes from a Latin word that literally translates to “on the left side”.

The entire English lexicon has been unkind to southpaws. If you come up with an idea that is crazy or stupid, it is said to be coming “out of left field”. If you insult someone but phrase it in a nice way, it is “a left-handed compliment”. One who is clumsy and uncoordinated might be considered to have “two left feet”.

I have found it helpful to think of lefties as being, not so much different, but “special”. There’s actually some evidence of this. Lefties are considered to be more creative. Leonardo Da Vinci and Helen Keller were left handed. So were Michelangelo and Aristotle. Left-handers tend to excel in the fine arts, such as music (Mozart, Paul McCartney, Jimi Hendrix, Lady Gaga) or theater (Julia Roberts, Keanu Reaves, Morgan Freeman, Judy Garland, Charlie Chaplain).

Some of them are smart and enterprising too. Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Madame Curie and Julius Caeser were all left-handed. Prince William as well. I read somewhere that, whenever William and Kate are side-by-side in front of a crowd, William will always be to Kate’s left, so that he can wave to the masses with his dominant hand.

Left-handed athletes are considered to have an advantage. Babe Ruth and LeBron James are good examples. Two of Alabama’s most famous quarterbacks, Kenny Stabler and Tua Tagovailoa, threw with the wrong hand.

Lefties even have their own special day. In fact it is coming up shortly, on August 13.

Still, despite my best efforts, I find myself subconsciously biased against these unfortunate folks. I hand a ball to my two year old grandson and encourage him to throw it back. I always put the ball in his right hand. Sometimes he tosses it back, other times he transfers the ball to his left and chucks it. Guess he hasn’t decided yet. Scientists still don’t know exactly why we choose one hand over the other. Statistics seem to indicate that genetics play a role. Another theory is that it has to do with how the baby is positioned in the womb. Others think the mother watched too many Three Stooges movies while pregnant.

I just figure God intended for everybody to be right-handed. After all, when you take an oath to tell the truth in court, “so help you God”, you are told to raise your right hand, not your left. Soldiers are told to salute with the right hand. During the pledge of allegiance, “one nation, under God”, we are told to place our right hand over our hearts.

But not to worry, lefties. God still loves you. And so do the rest of us. We’ll just try our best not to notice while you put your belt on backwards.