Partial to Home: Boarding house memories

When I was a kid playing football at Joe Cook Jr. High under Oop Swoope and desperate to put meat on my skinny bones, I’d accompany my dad’s secretary, a droll, long-limbed spinster named Helen Gault to Morris Boarding House for lunch.

Birney Imes: A wrinkle in time

HORSE CAVE, Ky. — Say you’ve been driving all day in the heat, as I had several weeks ago, and you’ve made it through Nashville

Partial to Home: Why we should care about trees

Here’s an adage about trees in the form of a riddle:

When’s the best time to plant a tree?

Answer: Twenty years ago.

When’s the second best time to plant a tree?

Answer: Now.

Partial to Home: A day on the Ohio

I’d been paddling for several hours when I stopped to check in with Neal. He was in Rising Sun, Indiana, at a hamburger stand called the Patty Wagon eating an ice cream cone.

Partial to Home: Eating barbecue and talking (local) politics

Joseph W. Mickens, Sr. is running late. He just phoned to say he was on his way from Starkville and would be here in five minutes.

Partial to Home: A time for change

I love this place. With the exception of my college years, I’ve lived virtually my entire life in Columbus.

Partial to Home: Never stop learning

I have friends, amateur farmers like myself, who rhapsodize about the joys of bush hogging.

Partial to home: Watermelon therapy

One morning in June of 2020, Robert Gregg got up before dawn, drove to a regional farmers’ market and bought a trailer-load of watermelons.

Partial to Home: Benevolence at the water’s edge

We had been on the road for about an hour. Ross, with our two kayaks strapped to the top of his Volkswagen, was following me down a narrow, unpopulated country road northeast of Aliceville, Alabama.

Partial to Home: A bouquet on Seventh Street

For years I’ve admired the yard of Glenda and Raymond Gross. Last week, seeing them at work, I stopped to admire their work up close and visit. I first met Raymond years ago at the YMCA when we both played handball.

Partial to Home: The peripatetic paddler

Look up the word “peripatetic” in a thesaurus and take your pick: nomadic, traveling, wandering, roving, roaming. You can’t describe Neal Moore without using one of them.

Partial to Home: Life continues

If you happened to be walking down Eighth Street North after the rains on Thursday, chances are around the 800 block on the right side of the street you would have noticed the dogwood draped in wisteria, both in full bloom.

Partial to Home: A lovin’ spoonful

My Grandma Eunice took her coffee from a cup and saucer, often mismatched. She would “spill” the coffee from the cup into the saucer and after it cooled, drink from the saucer.

Partial to Home: Nancy M. Imes, 1928-2021

Nancy McClanahan Imes, a lifelong resident of Columbus known for her over-sized personality, support of charitable causes, marriage to businessman and Dispatch publisher Birney Imes Jr. and, in her later years, the realization of a sumptuous French country-style home in the Prairie, died Thursday afternoon. She was 92.

Partial to Home: A woman’s best friend

About this time last year, Jannette Adams had a crippling case of the COVID blues. She felt lonely and adrift.

Partial to Home: Remembering the Beatles

The other day I was reminiscing with Newell Robinson, a friend from childhood. We hadn’t talked in decades. Newell, whose father, Dr. Jo Robinson, was a pediatrician here for many years, is a heart surgeon practicing in New York.

Partial to Home: From bleak to beautiful

This past week, a friend, who is a lover of trees, butterflies, hummingbirds and all things in the natural world, asked if I knew anything about the live oaks lining Airline Road near the Humane Society.

Partial to Home: Chowing down in the Black Hills

One day last week while organizing my mother’s desk my sister came across a box of letters. Calling them letters might be a stretch. These were postcards and notes written to our father by his children from summer camp and during trips with friends.

Partial to Home: Reconnecting with old friends

On long ago summer evenings when the kids were small, I would take them and their friends to the front campus of The W to play freeze tag.

Partial to Home: A case for kindness

What can I do? It’s a question a lot of people have been asking these past few days. How to deal with this ongoing feeling of helplessness, at home and in Washington.