Semen-

I’m a little older than you, but I couldn’t agree more. I got to watch my dad leave in the morning and come home greasy and tired, then be grateful he still had enough energy to throw a baseball with me before the sun set (though sad he cussed when I threw it over his head). My kids watch me shuffle into a home office…

Yep. My dad spent 30 years working on the railroad. Growing up we always had a closet full of left-behind umbrellas that still smelled like a SEPTA shop.

I feel like every comment here is about growing up in PA.

My dad was a mechanic and his best friend owned a salvage yard. My family called him “Jimmy the Junkie,” blissfully unaware that the honorific was not usually applied to junkyard proprietors. I practically grew up in that junkyard. I’ll never forget the day we drove by in my dad’s truck, and it was closed, and I had…

My dad cut out the middle man by getting a cash-paid side gig welding on trash trucks. He’d be there right when they pulled in to get first dibs. This partially explains my complete distrust of all “perfectly good” bicycles, golf clubs, and stereo equipment.

This is creepy, because my dad used to take me to do all of the above things as a kid … except his office was a garage filled with old mail that smelled like metal and long-expired Snap-On Tools calendars with unclad women sporting hairstyles that were probably out of date when the calendars were new.

Unreleased mode.

Stories like this can just Rouen your day.

Am I the only one that isn’t surprised the authorities backpedaled here?

You can’t really see it through the windows, but the meat curtains are terribly stretched and discolored.

This is a Eureka! moment for me. I thought steak was gross as hell growing up, because my father insisted on ordering for the whole family and it was always well done. As soon as I spread my wings a little bit as a teenager and had exposure to other grown-ups who ordered using the mysterious incantation “medium rare,”…

My grandmother was UU. She told my mother she could marry anyone she wanted, even a black man, as long as he wasn’t Catholic.

I do appreciate deftly delivered pedantry, but I’m aware that “relic” is used in much the same way “antique” is nowadays. Its original implication was not just holy bits, but actual pieces of saints. From the Latin for “remains.” Seven years of Catholic schooling taught me two things: which priests not to hang out…

“Mr. Sheheen said the bill, which calls for the flag to be moved to South Carolina’s Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum, received greater support in the Senate than he had anticipated.”

Gay marriage is leading America down the country road to the Devil’s chicken coop, natch.

You’re correct again. I live an hour from Columbia and am sick to death of the “that flag means family to me” trope. They’re interested enough in the flag to start fights about it, but not interested enough in their family to have even the most basic understanding of their family history. “Grandma said we had people…

Nailed it. Also, ask one of these nincompoops which regiment their ancestor served in, or what battles, or under whose command, and you’ll get a lot of blank looks.

The “African” is implied.

Also, no swastikas on Hogan’s Heroes.