AI that doesn’t look so … AI-ish

“Alexa told me to take a break. Who’s working for whom here?”
— Ginni Rometty, Former CEO of IBM

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“How’s retirement?” I’m asked that often since that retirement party I never planned.

My ready reply is, “It’ll do ‘til a better gig comes along.”

“Always said I’d never retire,” I told my retired friend. “I can’t do things retired people do. Tried gardening, but all I grew was older and crankier. Tried an RV, but realized camping for me is a 4-star hotel with a view of trees.”

“I was glad to leave the office behind,” my friend said. “Too much change, and now with this AI stuff.”

“C’mon,” I teased. “We had artificial intelligence in the office before computers. Remember that guy we worked with who …”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” he laughed. “Office culture. The way we worked.”

I paused to consider his comments. Measuring my career by office changes rather than years gave me a fresh perspective. The very definition of a “day at the office” has been rewritten since I started working.

That was at age 13 in five-and-dime stores, sweeping floors and assembling bikes on Saturdays for 25¢ an hour. A few years and a college degree later, I moved up to insurance claims adjusting at $250 a week. That bought me a starter home and a new car with money left over.

Life was good.

The American workplace back then really was different, though. Even during that first office job in the 1970s, it had been rapidly changing since the 50s. None-the-less, offices still reflected postwar traditions and formality.

Formal hierarchies. Clear distinctions between management and employees. Communication was direct, usually in person, and utilized titles and surnames when addressing colleagues or superiors.

Office dress codes ruled. Coat, tie, and dress shoes for men. Ladies wore skirts, dresses, and heels. 

Today, that rigid, status-driven society has morphed into business models that emphasize teamwork and recognition that good ideas come from all minds. Plus, the concept of “casual Friday” 30 years ago introduced “dress down” offices in many workplaces.

The wise words of one supervisor who mentored me back then still stick in my mind, however. “If you want to be regarded as a professional, you have to dress like a professional.”

Acceptable professional behaviors now and then differ. Practices now considered unprofessional and unhealthy were everyday occurrences then.

Like smoking. My boss at that first job smoked. in the office As did the secretary (now called the “administrative assistant”). But it was a time when almost half of all Americans were smokers. When smoke-filled air and stinky ashtrays at home and in the workplace were common fare. Even after moving into the communication field a few years later, newspaper offices were filled with smokers with up to half the employees smoking at their desks.

Good grief! Even my doctor and dentist smoked back then. While providing care in the exam room. A Surgeon General’s report on smoking was largely ignored for 30 years, until the 1990s when smoking bans first gained support.

Also not that long ago, job security meant long-term company loyalty with a company pension. Today’s landscape is a ‘gig economy.’ A workforce where people have multiple careers. Where employers offer employee-managed 401(k) plans and company investment opportunities.

Then there’s technology: a shift from typewriters and Dictaphones in my first office job to computers, then to voice-to-text capabilities, each transition leading to less paper use—except for the one colleague that is. The one who, despite adapting to email, still printed and filed a copy of every message.

In conclusion, my retired friend and I agreed that the biggest change in modern offices might well be the elimination of offices altogether. The remote position culture: working from home or on the road, always reachable by email and text, working non-standard hours.

“And now it’s AI taking jobs,” my friend shook his head.

“Oh, that doesn’t worry me,” I retorted. “I may be going to work for AI.”

“What the …?” he quizzed.

“Yep,” I said. “Looking at a new part-time retirement gig. Uses all my old skills. Proofreading, clarifying, and fact-checking AI-generated documents for companies wanting to make them look … well, less AI-ish.

“Makes me wonder though,” I smiled. “These days, who really is working for whom?”

—Leon Aldridge

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Leon Aldridge is an “enjoying semi-retirement until a better gig comes along” newspaper editor and publisher, communication and marketing practitioner, and column writer. His columns are featured in: The Center Light and Champion, The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche, the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2026. Feel free to use excerpts with full and clear credit given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling.’

Nobody left the table hungry

“A grandmother’s kitchen — where memories are seasoned with love.”
– Author unknown but most likely well nourished.

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Just like Sunday dinner at Granny’s house.

That was my first thought last week at Lions Club, where fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn, and hot rolls were served up for the civic club luncheon.

Any meal my father’s mother cooked on any day of the week was the equivalent of an East Texas Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner combined. I cherish the festive childhood memories of meals at her house that sadly ceased after my grandfather died. And feasts like last week’s Lion’s lunch still remind me of those family gatherings like they were just yesterday.

A yesterday when most meals were enjoyed at home. Meals that weren’t “hit and run” on the way to somewhere else. When family’s sat down together to eat. No phones. No TV. No rush. Fast food was yet to replace home cooking, TV dinners were still trendy and eating out somewhere other than the bus stop cafe downtown or the truck stop out on the highway was a rare treat.

It was a yesterday when Mom’s meals on the table coincided with Dad’s arriving home from work. You could set your watch by it. Back when we wore watches. That needed to be set.

A yesterday when being in your place at the dinner table was a request not open to debate. And failure to comply meant you’d better be so badly incapacitated that walking to the table was not physically possible.

Also not debatable was deciding whether Mom’s meal suited your taste buds. You ate what was on the table without question or comment. Unless you were saying how good everything tasted … including that nasty liver.

Although it was the age of “eat what your momma put on the table,” there was no way even the pickiest eater was going to leave the table hungry. And that went double for Sunday dinner at Granny’s.

The table that occupied my grandmother’s dining room, which now resides in mine, was the center of many meals. Common fare was fried chicken or ham, often both. Baked chicken and dressing were usually holiday delights. Mashed potatoes covered with cream gravy, steaming corn on the cob, and hot homemade biscuits begging for butter. Plates were piled high, but not so high that the aroma of fresh-baked pie coming from the kitchen failed to remind that you’d better save room for dessert.

For most grandmothers, including mine, cooking was a labor of love. Meals prepared without a single recipe. Ingredients blended with just a dash of this, a pinch of that, and a lot of love. Everything coming together at the same time, which was no small feat considering Granny could have a meal on the table and not miss a Sunday service sitting in her pew at the Pittsburg Methodist Church.

As a child, I never knew she accomplished her miracles having dinner ready like that by spending hours in the kitchen Saturday night and Sunday morning before church. I thought the plate I sat down to was just another measure of “grandmother’s meal magic.”

Watching her prepare a meal (only if we promised not to get in the way) was more than magic. It was controlled, coordinated chaos. Prepping chicken for the oven, mixing the dressing, peeling potatoes, and pulling husks off ears of corn. Hands moving with the precision of a symphony orchestra conductor.

To this day, I don’t know how she did it. But when we heard, “Y’all come on, it’s ready,” the chicken was moist and perfect. The potatoes were fresh and creamy, waiting for gravy. And the corn? Dripping with butter, ready to savor every bite, row by row.

And then the most amazing thing happened. Once the blessing was offered and bowls started around the table, Granny wiped her hands on her apron, sat down with a cup of coffee, and ate nothing. Just visited and waited on everyone else while we ate.

Honestly, I know meals today are still out-of-this-world good. We still dine to a supreme sufficiency, as my good friend Joe Fomby used to say. So why do we long for those Sunday dinners at Granny’s house? Some insist the food really was that much better. Others argue it was the family-gathering tradition, seemingly not as common today as it once was.

I’m saying it’s a little of both — seasoned with a lot of love.

But while we’re debating this issue, could you pass me another piece of chicken and a roll … please.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2026. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

Moving a little bit of paradise

“I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.”

— Jorge Luis Borges (1899-?) Argentinian writer, poet, essayist, and translator

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Moving a home library from one end of the house to the other is not exactly what I would call paradise. Ask me how I know that.

Every load hauled down the hall last week met with many diversions. Pauses to peruse this book, that book, and three more I was astonished to discover again.

Like the one titled “Billy Whiskers.” A small, fragile book held together by a brown paper cover, the likes of which we folded and wrapped around textbooks eons ago. Tears and missing corners surround a Red Goose Shoes logo advertising “W.L. Garrett & Son, Pittsburg, Texas, Phone 216. Where the price is the thing.”

The cover also bears my father’s name, printed in pencil.

The 160-page illustrated children’s story of a goat and his escapades displays a publishing date of 1902 by the Saalfield Publishing Company. Just one of several among my father’s childhood books.

Mom was an avid reader, therefore I come by my book fetish honestly. I don’t recall catching Dad reading anything not related to one of his hobbies, like coin collecting. Evidence remains, however, that Dad was exposed to books as a child. Because my grandmother kept them all before passing them on to me.

My love for books is more than the immersive experience of simple reading. More than the gateway to knowledge, understanding, and escape that books offer. Even more than the excitement of living a thousand lives lost among the pages.

Real books are my passion. Quiet moments in the comfort of holding a piece of the past. Turning physical pages. Admiring the aroma of the paper.

Which is why library closings or their downsizing into primarily digital download centers in recent years, has been sad to see.

Hope perseveres, however. Recent research reveals several strong positive correlations between hard-copy books and improved learning outcomes. Things like increased comprehension, retention, and deep processing. Data pointing to print materials generally surpassing digital screens for focused, long-term learning. Sometimes, six to eight times better.

Regardless of how one reads, however, consider the seldom mentioned legacy of books. How they’ve impacted our culture, our philosophies, and our vocabulary.

How many times have you heard someone say, “book learning, book worm, book of life, book of love, or the Good Book?”

My grandmother, whose book learning ended after the seventh grade, used to say, “Can’t judge a book by its cover!” Then, on other occasions, “His life is like an open book,” or, “You read him like a book.”

I’m often quick to jokingly say, “You could write a book about that” indicating one’s display of knowledge on a particular topic.

Then there’s “Do it by the book, hit the books,” and “that’s one for the books.”

My books, my home library, was launched while hitting the books in college. But for the first time, I’m just now cataloging them using a neat online tool aptly named “LibraryThing.” I recommend it as it meets my two main criteria: free and easy to use.

When finished (cataloging, not accumulating), it’s looking like the final tally could pass a little more than a thousand volumes of history and biographies, lots of journalism and writing, business and marketing, Biblical reference and faith. Then there’s automotive, aviation, music, photography,. Fiction, poetry and other assorted categories. To name a few.

More is fun, but collections of just 20–80 books in the home have been recognized for boosting literacy and long-term educational outcomes. Helping children not only perform well in school but also foster a love for reading and learning.

In one case cited, Justin Minkel, 2007 Arkansas Teacher of the Year and 2011 National Board-certified elementary teacher in northwest Arkansas, wrote about making sure each of his students received 40 books to take home. Minkel found that home libraries not only heightened academic success but “also had a tremendous impact on each child’s love of reading …(igniting) that same love of books in their parents, siblings, cousins, and friends.”

I remember one time when my daughter, Robin, was “ignited” by our home library. It was some years ago when my children, Robin and son, Lee, were pitching in to pack for our move to the Hill Country.

Lugging another box of books through the house, she asked, “Dad, why can’t you collect something like stamps or butterflies?”

“Look at it this way,” I suggested. “You’re helping move a little bit of paradise.”

—Leon Aldridge

(Photo at top of the page: A portion of one wall in my home library. Not pictured: the rest of this wall and the other walls in my library, a collection of more than 100 cookbooks in the kitchen, and the night stands in my bedroom built like small bookcases.)

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine. © Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2026. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

The paper goes to press on time tomorrow

“It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American writer, poet, philosopher, and lecturer.

– – – – – –

While putting these words together a few days ago, I couldn’t help but keep an eye on on the weather. Not out of fear or anxiety, but in awe of nature’s icy artwork.

Winter can be a playful paradox, delivering devastating damage and dramatic beauty in one cold blast.

That said, I’m good at some things, but I am not good at tolerating cold. When temps slip below 60, I’m finding a flannel shirt and kicking the heater up to “comfy.”

I’m also not good at being told I can’t do something when determination leads me to believe otherwise. It’s an affliction akin to being “bull-headed like your father,” as my mother lovingly put it. That personality flaw and this recent weather surge reminded of a Sunday afternoon journey that was going to prove either me or my mother right.

It started with a weekend trip home to East Texas a few years ago during time spent in the Texas Hill Country as publisher at the Boerne Star newspaper. Church concluded, and a home-cooked lunch offer tempted. But there was that nagging forecast.

“Better stay,” Mom warned.

“Can’t,” I retorted. “Press day tomorrow.”

“Might have to wait,” she suggested.

“You know the business,” I laughed. “The paper goes to press. On time. To borrow from the postal service, ‘neither sleet nor snow, nor fear of freezing …’ well, you know how that goes.”

By 1 p.m. I was rolling south when less that 30 minutes into the journey, light snow started falling. Roads were good through Nacogdoches and on to Crockett. But the farther I went, the faster snow fell, and the slower I drove.

Finding fuel in Caldwell, I slid in to top off the tank. Traffic was diminishing as roads deteriorated to little more than tire tracks of the brave (?) few still on the road.

“Should I stop?” I asked myself. “No way,” my other self said. “The paper goes to press tomorrow.”

Still talking with myself because it was the only company I had, I reflected on the unknowingly fortunate choice of vehicles I made for the weekend trip, my Ford Taurus. I had a Dodge pickup and the Taurus at home. Not just any Taurus, but a low production model designated “SHO” representing “Super High Output.” Ford’s mid-90’s offering of a small sporty sedan packing a high-performance engine and a five-speed manual transmission. Ran like a muscle car and handled like a sports car.

Darkness dominated white landscapes as the Taurus and I neared I-35 at San Marcos. Just a few miles of interstate to New Braunfels before the last two-lane miles to Boerne. But atop the first hill, tail lights as far as I could see on the icy thoroughfare led to a wreck blocking both lanes.

An exit appeared. Without thought, I took it. “Good choice,” I smiled as the service road rallied me past the freeway “parking lot.”

Traffic leaving New Braunfels was no problem. I was in the only one on the road. Literally. Never saw another car in the 45 miles that took an hour and a half to drive. Slow speeds, front-wheel drive, and matching gears to traction proved to be the perfect combination. Loved my pickup, but it would have never made it as far as Bastrop.

“Daniel,” I called an employee at home. “I need a favor. I’m almost to Boerne. See if you can get me a hotel room. I’ve made it this far, but no way I’m gambling on the hills and turns out to my house tonight”

“Couldn’t go anyway,” he said. “Highway Department closed all roads out of town hours ago.”

A big sigh of relief and a heart filled with gratitude marked my arrival at the historic Ye Kendall Inn. Even better, the hotel shared a parking lot with the newspaper office.

“Well played, Daniel,” I smiled.

Collapsing in the hotel room just short of 1 a.m., I reflecting on the last 12 hours of driving. Navigating snow and ice praying I would make it up the next hill or around the next curve. “What a trip,” I thought to myself. Lived the journey and made the destination with the added thrill of nature’s grand show viewed from a unique perspective.

Then I heard that other self again. Or was that my mother’s voice?

“You know you could be stuck in a snowbank somewhere, don’t you?”

“But I’m not,” I responded, because I was still the only one I had to talk to.

“And the paper goes to press on time tomorrow.”

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2026. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

Lessons learned from the lowly bandage

“What happened to your head … you run into the door again?”
—Question from a well-meaning friend.

– – – – – –

Consider the lowly plastic strip bandage.

Commonly called a Band-Aid, although that’s Johnson & Johnson’s trademarked name. By any other name (mine is CVS), slap one on your arm, hand, or knee, and few will notice. But whatever the brand name, just stick one atop your head, and suddenly everyone wants to know. “Did ‘ja hurt your head?”

“No, I just thought the bandage matched my shirt nicely.”

First lesson learned: A bandage on your head invites new friends everywhere you go.

Like the kid working check out at the DG. A total stranger who stopped, mid-stream scanning my bandage purchases, and asked, “What happened to your head?”

Even the sweet little lady at the grocery store. No clue who she was. “What did you do to your head, Sonny?” Aww, gotta love a little lady who calls you “Sonny” when you’ve got as much gray hair as she does.

Speaking of gray hair, the story behind the strip bandage on my head started more than a year ago with a strange-looking place on my shoulder. Stay with me, there is a connection between the two. I had long ago accepted bumps or blemishes anywhere at this age as the norm. But because this one was a little larger and different, I asked about it at my next routine physical.

“I don’t think it’s a concern,” the NP remarked, “but let’s let a dermatologist verify that.”

Time got away from me, and I was back in the doc’s office. “What’d the dermatologist say about that place on your shoulder?”

“Ahh, about that. I didn’t get around to it. Yeah, not smart.”

So, right before Christmas, I finally shared the shoulder aberration with a specialist. “How long has it been there?” she asked.

“Mmm, ‘bout a year, or more,” I shrugged.

“How long since you’ve seen a dermatologist?”

“Let’s see … 1980 something?”

Sparing me the lecture I deserved, she checked everywhere. Back, shoulders, arms, neck, head. “The one on your shoulder is just age,” she concluded.

“Gee, thanks, doc.”

“But this one on your head, it’s suspicious.”

A few days later, the surgeon reported as he was wrapping up, “It was small. We got it all and early.” By wrapping up, I’m not joking. I left the office resembling a poster shot for the 1959 horror flick, “The Mummy.”

Removing the gauze the next morning to redress the incision was, shall we say, equally frightening. “A small one?” I gasped gazing at the two-inch incision sewn up like a football. “I’m really glad it wasn’t a big one.”

Biggest lesson learned: That tiny blemish I didn’t even know was there was the harmless-looking “tip of the iceberg.” Skin cancers grow unseen beneath the skin. If you, like me, have not done so in a while, see a dermatologist for an annual skin cancer screening, and tell them I sent you.

Basal cell carcinoma is the most common skin cancer, presenting only as small bumps or pink patches. It rarely spreads but can cause extensive local damage and scarring if left untreated. Prognosis is excellent when caught early.

Oh, and “small” is a relative term.

Old lesson learned again: Never say never.

Less than 48 hours after the procedure, the sight of a ginormous square bandage on my head Sunday morning was not pretty. Nonetheless, I fulfilled my regular weekly Sunday morning role as song leader at church. Wearing my usual coat, tie, and shiny shoes. Sporting a baseball cap.

Before commencing with the first song selection, I commented to the congregation, “One of my favorite sayings is ‘Never say never.’ I’ve led singing for most of my life, and had anyone ever said to me, ‘Someday you will stand before a Sunday morning church service to lead singing wearing a baseball cap,’ I would have laughed, ‘N-e-v-e-r.’

“Well, here I stand.”

Within a few days, I thankfully traded the big, bulky white bandage for a smaller flesh-tone plastic strip dressing. Call it by whatever name you like, I’m still wearing one and healing nicely. And still meeting new friends.

What I honestly already knew: The cause is usually from sun exposure. So, kids, when your mother tells you, as mine did, to wear a hat and sunscreen when you go outside, please pay better attention than I did.

That way, hopefully you won’t have to learn from a bandage. One we all use often, but still never know what to call it.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2026. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

The scary thought of a thumb typers fate

“If you type adeptly with 10 fingers, you’re typing faster than your mind is working.”
— James A. Michener (1907 – 1997) American writer of more than 40 books.

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The doctor’s waiting room was full. People of all ages were sending and receiving messages on cell phones, but never making eye contact with each other.

It looked like a preview of the next horror flick coming soon to a theater near you. “Night of the Living Device Zombies.”

“Hello” I said to the man I sat down next to. He glanced my way and went back to his phone without missing a thumb tap.

The “thumb typers” amuse me, remembering that I, too, once typed with just two digits. It was a well-known hack for those of us who cut typing class in high school. We called it “hunt-and-peck.”  Instead of thumbs, hunt-and-peck utilized two index fingers. The system served me well until I learned to use three fingers, then graduated to four. I’m up to about five fingers now.

I learned on a real typewriter. Few of today’s thumb typers even know what a typewriter is, let alone ever seen one. Seriously. Case in point. A young student, seeing my grandfather’s old manual typewriter in my office recently, asked, “What is that?”

“It’s a very old computer,” I said attempting to keep a straight face.

“Wow,” was his response. “Does it still work?”

“No,’ I said sadly. “It needs a ribbon.”

“A what,” he asked?

My dad’s father, S.V. Aldridge, retired in 1954 from the Cotton Belt Railroad, which today is part of Union Pacific. The railroad was his sole lifetime occupation, one he embarked on in 1901 at the age of 13 as a rail crew laborer. The last 24 years of his 53-year career were spent as a section foreman with an office in the small depot that sat between two crossing lines at the intersection of Quitman and Mill Street in downtown Pittsburg, Texas.

When he retired, the typewriter went home with him, where he showed me how to type my name on it as a youngster. Slowly using one finger at a time.

An added delight, sheer magic to a kid, was pushing the metal tab that changed the type from black to red.

After he died in December of 1967, I became custodian of the old black Underwood with gold lettering and pin striping.

During the almost 60 years I’ve owned it, it has shared space in my home office alongside a parade of computers from a first-generation Apple Mac in the 1980s to the current MacBook Pro laptop I’m typing on as we speak. Sometimes using six fingers.

In its day, however, the old manual typewriter was just as revolutionary as computers are today.

Current keyboards are exactly the same as they have been since 1874, when Remington updated the layout by introducing the “QWERTY” keyboard, so named for the sequence of keys that begins the top row of letters. Therefore, the typing class exercise that is older than I am, “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog’s back,” employs every letter of the alphabet typed the same way, whether on a 19th-century typewriter or a 2026 digital device.

Come to think of it, the typewriter was one up on the computer. It had its own built-in printer. Multiple copies? No problem. You do remember carbon paper, don’t you? Plus, power outages and dead batteries were never a problem. A typewriter required neither. Software updates? That was a new cushion for your desk chair.

And obsolescence was never an issue. My grandfather’s 90-year-old machine has never required the first software update. In fact, it would produce documents just as well today as it did back then … if it had a new ribbon.

Quaint, but just a relic of the past, you say? Hold on. Just like vinyl records that came back from the dead about the time their obituary appeared in print, brand new manual typewriters began appearing on the market several years ago. Specialty retailer Hammacher Schlemmer rolled out one that honestly made it sound like the “newest thing under the sun.”

And speaking of honesty, I came clean with the young man I teased about the old typewriter being a computer. I did caution him, however, to beware the fearful fate too many thumb typers fall into.

“Never type faster than your mind is working.”

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2026. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

Lighting up the night skies

“Shine bright like a firework in the darkest night.”
— “Firework” recorded by Katy Perry

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Holiday lights are the best. When colorful decorations delight, and fireworks illuminate the night. 

While I was fascinated by fireworks as a kid, I’m even more mesmerized these days by the growing phenomenon of drone light shows. Mindboggling artistic exhibitions in the nighttime skies using lighted drones driven with computer precision.

My son, Lee, became a skilled drone pilot a few years ago. Marveling at his breathtaking nighttime photos of lights on the horizon intrigued me to give it a try.

Snagging a simple example on sale, I headed for an empty field near my house. Loaded with instructions and optimism, .

“This lever is up; this one is down … I’ve got this.”

Enthusiasm turned to confusion on the first real test flight. “Was that the right stick forward or the left one back?” I watched as the just-out-of-the-box bird flew away, ignoring my futile attempts at any description of control. I was still watching when it disappeared into trees on the far side of the field.

A couple of hours of fighting briars and poison ivy, scanning treetops, and crawling through brush piles proved pointless. Dusk ended my doomed drone search.

Follow-up expeditions the next couple of days yielded not a peep from the locator beacon that the owner’s manual assured would sound if the drone were “accidentally” lost . “Guess I’ll leave the drones to Lee,” I conceded.

My son also loved fireworks as a youngster. With a passion. Every holiday, he stashed money away anticipating the opening of the first fireworks stand. The year of his most memorable fireworks show, he amassed an arsenal capable of defending our southern shores Lake Murvaul home against any invasion. Should one occur.

Dark descended as he opened the large plastic bucket full of “buy one get a dozen free” bargains.

Spectators unfolded lawn chairs and opened refreshment coolers. Lake Murvaul holiday fireworks shoreline displays border on legendary.

“Oohs” and “aahs” arose from the darkness as brilliant, colorful displays began lighting the night sky, painting the water with shimmering reflections.

Lee strated his contributions with small “twirly-thingys” whizzing upward. All was bliss until … until that one spent glowing winged ember thingy drifted downward. The one that descended into the arsenal bucket.

And that’s when the “really big show” began. Everyone broke into retreat mode toward land. But curiosity got the best of me. Looking back at the inferno, I saw several things.

I saw a fireworks display the likes of which I’m pretty sure had never before been seen on the lake, perhaps never since. Rockets shooting in one direction, buzz bombs going off in another. The light was blinding. The noise was deafening. Not since Wolf Blitzer’s CNN coverage of the invasion of Iraq had I witnessed such ferocious firepower.

I saw neighbors hunkering down, dodging bottle rockets as they folded lawn chairs and scrambled for safety.

Then I saw a broom in the boathouse. Wielding the makeshift shovel, I braved the rogue pyrotechnics show, pushing what was left off the pier and into the water.

Almost as fast as it had started, Lee’s fireworks show was over. With a muffled sizzle, the mass of embers, melted plastic, and detonating devices sank in a cloud of steam that lingered over the murky depths.

The silence was deafening. Not one frog or cricket was heard. Then someone applauded. Another. joined in. Clapping spread around the cove.

Lee was devastated. He had just watched weeks of allowance and pay for chores go up in a flash and die in a puff of smoke.

There was talk for days afterward. “Did you see that on the south shore the other night?” Everyone was pretty sure it was the most spectacular event since lightning hit the oil storage tanks over on FM 1970.

It was still being talked about years later, the day we moved from the lake.

Lee recovered, later earned a degree in computer networking and is tech savvy in ways I won’t pretend to understand. I haven’t asked him about fireworks lately. But who knows. He may consider tackling this amazing new field of drone powered nighttime light shows replacing fireworks.

Not me, though. I never did find my derelict drone.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2026. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

Resolutions are so overrated

“Tonight’s December thirty-first,
Something is about to burst …
Hark, it’s midnight, children dear.
Duck! Here comes another year!”

—Ogden Nash, (1902 – 1971) American poet declared by The New York Times as the country’s best-known producer of humorous poetry.

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“Well, I’ve completed my New Year’s resolutions,” a buddy bragged last week.

“Resolutions are so overrated,” I reacted. “They just go in one ‘year’ and out the other.”

I laughed. I thought it was funny. Popping off, however, compelled me to start thinking about some sort of, let’s say, focus, for the new year.

Resolving to make it through another year with a smile and being here this time next year for a progress report is a fantastic focus for any year. Iconic comedian Groucho Marx said it best when he was reportedly asked in an interview what he hoped people would say about him a hundred years from now.

He responded, “I hope they say, ‘Boy, doesn’t he look good for his age?’”

It was also Groucho who said in possibly one of the very few serious quotes he was credited with, “I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.”

Honestly, who does not want to live a long and happy life? Probably no one … except maybe for one of my relatives that comes to mind. Just ask him how he is doing, and he will likely growl, “Well, I was in a good mood this morning, but I am about to get over it.”

Some say he’s not grumpy, just being funny. Really? You should meet him.

A few years ago, I sent said relative a book I enjoyed. Written by UCLA postdoctoral researcher Alex Korb, “The Upward Spiral” validates my thoughts on the rewards of happiness. Korb says that listening to music from the happiest times of our past becomes our happiness in the present because we embrace music associated with intense emotional life experiences.

A happiness seeker as long as I can remember, my happiest memories have always been moments in music. Listening to it, studying it, making it, thinking about it. I can’t be involved with music and be unhappy.

My Uncle Bill, my mom’s baby brother, personified that musical theory long before Kolb’s book appeared in print. And, no, Uncle Bill is not the grumpy relative. He’s the life and humor of every family reunion. He’s also the one who taught me a fun music game many years ago.

Get a bunch of people together and start playing music from your younger years. Encourage every person to share the memories each song evokes. The city where they first heard the tune. The car they were driving at the time. The girl or guy they were dating. Smiles and laughter will be spontaneous.

Uncle Bill’s music game supports another of Korb’s happiness theories. Smile. Smile when you are happy. Smile when you’re not happy. Smile all the time.

“Why would I want to do that,” my aforementioned grumpy relative once asked.

Mom had the answer for that. “Smile! It makes everyone wonder what you’ve been up to.”

According to Korb,“ The brain isn’t always very smart.” The author contends that it responds to the world around us, sorting through random information and looking for clues on how to react. Therefore, when you smile, even when you aren’t happy, smiling fools the brain into thinking you must, in fact, be happy after all. Causing it to send happy signals, even though you really feel otherwise.

So, for 2026, I resolve to keep on enjoying my favorite music, beckoning to those intense emotional memories that keep me smiling, convincing my brain that I’m happy all the time, and keeping everyone wondering … “What is he up to.”

Then what remains, to quote Groucho one last time, “Getting older is no problem. You just have to live long enough.”

So, “Duck, here comes another year!” With it comes my wish for us all. For a happy, blessed, and prosperous year.

Especially for my aforementioned crabby relative.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2026. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

Angels always close to us

“There is an angel close to you this day. Merry Christmas, and I wish you well.”
—Paul Crume (1912 –1975) Dallas Morning News columnist who wrote a front-page column every day for 24 years.

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As I sit crafting one more Christmas column, I do it relishing in the blessing of memories and personal traditions. Which means one more time, I’ll read my favorite Christmas columns from the work of long-time Dallas Morning News editor Paul Crume.

One, entitled “Christmas Fires,” I will still read this year, despite un-Christmas like 70-degree weather. The other, “To Touch an Angel,” was first published on Christmas Day of 1967 and is still published every Christmas in the Morning News as “Angels Among Us.”

I believe Angels are among us all the time. During this time of the year, reminders of them are seen everywhere on Christmas trees. The tree top angel at my house put in for vacation this year, so there’s a gnome filling in. But I know angels are still around.

Christmas has always been a magical season for me. Special times steeped in the comfort of family and loved ones gathering. Sharing a meal. Laughing. Being thankful to our Creator.  

Times like the Christmas living on the lake when Santa brought us all bicycles. My kids and I enjoyed Christmas morning peddling cheer along county roads around Lake Murvaul.

Then there’s the time we spent a snowy family Christmas in the mountains of Taos, New Mexico. Skiing days and enjoying a tiny tree with gifts, celebrating in our room at the lodge. Magically, Santa still found us.

And how many times have I smiled, recalling the Christmas when my incredibly artistic daughter, Robin, gathered up empty boxes and crumpled paper after gifts were opened, taking it all to her room. It was a while before I discovered she had left new toys under the Christmas tree while replicating Elvis’s Graceland home from the scavenged materials.

It was another 1980s Christmas Eve in Center when I used on my own children, an admonition that my grandmother once used on me. “You better go to sleep before Santa comes.”

Assuming my children were deep in dreams of the Jolly Old Elf, I tackled boxes bearing “Some Assembly Required.” Thinking, “This won’t take long.”

Pushing midnight, the Little Homemaker play kitchen was done, inserting the last tab A into slot 4 and securing with one #6 bolt and one #9 nut. Then came the tricycle, the doll stroller, and stocking stuffers. Just in time to experience the magic of an early Christmas morning sunrise.

Watching my children experience Christmas morning always reminded me of Christmas dawning in Mount Pleasant one 1960s Yule season when I heard a soft voice at my bedroom door. “You think he’s come?”

As the elder sibling realizing that Santa was more than mere magic, my trust became helping preserve the mystery for my younger sisters.

“I don’t know,” I told my youngest sister, Sylvia. “Let’s go see.” With middle sister Leslie also up and curious, we peeked into the living room. Changing colors projected Christmas magic onto the shiny aluminum tree. Under it, a collection of unwrapped gifts glittered in the early morning light.

“I think he’s been here,” I said.

And, about that Christmas Eve warning I borrowed from my grandmother. As a child, Christmas was a time of anticipation. The excruciating wait for Christmas to finally get here. Then waking up Christmas morning, excited to see what St. Nick had left.

We moved a lot back then. Perry Brothers five-and-dime store managers were relocated more often than Methodist ministers. Four times by the time I was in fifth grade. Traveling to East Texas for Christmas made updating forwarding addresses for Santa a full-time job.

There was magic in my grandmother’s bedtime stories on Christmas Eve with her frequent reminders that, “You better go to sleep before ‘ol Santy comes.”

If her stories didn’t put me to sleep fast enough, she typically turned off the bedside lamp, pretending to hear reindeer on the roof.  And I pretended to be asleep, still wishing it were Christmas morning.

My wish for each of you is the same as every year. That you are blessed with the wonderful magic of Christmas, both making memories and reminiscing about them.

In the company of angels close to us.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2025. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

Let’s just call it thinning the herd

“A hobby a day keeps the doldrums away.”
— Phyllis McGinley (1905 – 1978) Pulitzer Prize winning American author of children’s books and poetry.

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Everyone needs a hobby. Crafting. Creating. Collecting. I started collecting model cars as a kid before moving on to real ones.

And everybody has their own take on hobbies. A good friend and business associate, whose “hobby” was collecting cows (he called it “ranching”), quizzed me late one evening decades ago. “Isn’t it expensive and lots of work taking care of those old cars?”

Pitching another log on the fire we started to keep warm while out checking on his small herd before an impending cold front, I casually smiled and offered, “You mean as compared to taking care of cows.”

He grinned and I waited before adding in friendly jest, “I don’t recollect ever feeding my old cars in the rain and cold. And if I get busy and ignore them for a while, they’re still in the garage when I come back.”

I’m still tending to my dwindling herd these days. But a survey of the stable last week left me wondering if maybe it’s time to let one of my steeds go to someone else’s love and care. Perhaps the ’57 Thunderbird or the ’55 Ford Crown Victoria. I’ve had my grandmother’s “bought new” ‘57 Ford for more than 40 years. That one is family and will go to family when I can no longer care for it.

In the garage, I ran my fingertips in the dust along the rear fender of the Thunderbird’s mid-century tailfin styling. Then stuck my head inside the Crown Vic to get a fix of the distinctive aroma of old car upholstery before glancing at Granny’s car. Where new brake parts lay, still in boxes on the floor nearby. Where I placed them, saying, “I’ll get back to this next week.”

Was that earlier this year … or was it last year.?

They get started occasionally and maybe even driven around the block because I subscribe to the same life motto for my cars that I do for myself. It’s better to wear out than to rust out.

Fun and fast cars have been a part of my life since the day I was old enough to read automotive magazines. The day I put the comic books back on the shelf and purchased a copy of Car Craft.

That was also around the time I recall attending a quarter mile drag-racing event at the legendary dragstrip at the old Caddo Mills, Texas airfield. With Mount Pleasant High School senior Larry Ward. He worked after school at Perry Brothers, where Dad was the manager. Larry was a car guy with a cool ’54 Plymouth sporting a fresh “Battleship Gray” paint job and checkerboard flipper hubcaps. It fell my good fortune that Larry noticed this car-crazy kid and invited me to tag along with him and his girlfriend, Barbara Riley. Who also worked at Perry’s. And later became Mrs. Larry Ward.

That was actually my second drag race. Credit for attending my first goes to my father when I was about 9 or 10. Which is something I’ve never figured out because Dad had no appreciation whatsoever for flash or fast in automobiles. His transportation philosophies focused on six-cylinders, standard shift, no power, no A/C, just low-price, barebones rides.

Yet I vividly remember the West Texas racetrack near Lake Kemp when we lived in Seymour. I also never forgot being astounded at watching an old, beat-up-looking jalopy dust off a brand-new white 1958 Ford Thunderbird like it was sitting still.

I was hooked.

Dad began shaking his head when I bought my first car at 15 and started spending Friday nights at Stracener Drag Strip in Bettie, Texas, and Saturday nights at Interstate Raceway near Tyler. “Son,” he lectured me, “cars are just transportation to get from point A to point B.”

“Sorry Dad,” I said. “It’s too late … and you kinda started it.”

So, after stamps, model cars, and hot rod magazines, I’ve spent my three score and ten collecting cars. Like the ones I grew up with. Like I used to have. Like I wanted back then but couldn’t afford.

And now? The last in a long line sit slumbering in the garage. Is it time maybe one of them grace someone else’s garage? Spend sunny afternoons at car shows again? Awaken memories for others as they have for me?

Now, don’t go calling the retirement home. I’m not swapping my mid-50s bench seats for a recliner. Let’s just call it thinning the herd.

I’m not ready for the doldrums.

And I still need to get those brakes fixed on Granny’s car.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2025. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.