Dick Wolfsie

The dollar store as we knew it is gone. Oh, it’s still there. I can see the helium balloons from the street—hugging the ceiling, beckoning me to enter.  But don’t you fall for it. It’s not a dollar store anymore, it’s the Dollar and a Quarter Store, regardless of the store name. One chain considered…

I lost a friend and colleague this week. I visited Carl Finchum the day before he passed. The bond between a photographer and a reporter is like a marriage, with some ups and downs as well as zooms and pans. Our working relationship lasted a decade, from 1994 until about 2004. Much of the success…

As a wordsmith, I love reading the history behind common phrases. Here’s one that has a Hoosier origin. You might think I made this up (and you’d be correct). Despite the popular belief that the saying “It takes two to tango” is of Argentinian origin, it actually originated in Noblesville, Indiana at the turn of…

I do a lot of dumb things. But I have no regrets, because these missteps often end up as an inspiration for one of my columns.  I do not do dumb things on purpose. That would be, well,…dumb. One of the dumbest things I ever did was about four years ago when Mary Ellen and…

Over the years, several of my sports heroes have had their careers tarnished following allegations they were using performance-improvement drugs. During the recent Olympics, several athletes were similarly accused. As a newspaper columnist, I am proud of what I have written, unassisted by any humor-enhancing drugs or whimsy-producing substances. Many humor columnists have on their…

I almost deleted the e-mail, thinking it was spam, but lately I have nothing else to do, so I read everything. I didn’t recognize the sender’s address but I clicked on it, anyway. Maybe it was some rich guy in Uganda who wanted to send me a million dollars—after I send him $5,000 for shipping…

Valentine’s Day stresses me out.  I never know what to buy for my wife. The worst part is looking for the perfect card. I’ve lurked on the holiday aisle at the Hallmark store, waiting until some guy about my age laughed at a particular punch line. If there was another one of those cards in…

Degree in marketing! I’m in a lot of trouble. I tried to sneak in the back door without my wife seeing me, but I got caught with you-know-what on my breath: salami. Yes, I had been out carousing. At Kroger. Ever since Covid started, my wife prefers that we not go into stores, but instead…

I’d like to share a few numbers with you: 4927262920202826 5736282018082727 9284748495483838 These are some of the tracking numbers for the Christmas gifts I bought online over the past few months. I copied and pasted the figures into the UPS or FedEx websites to be sure they were on the way. By the way, those…