There was an old house sitting out in the country. It hasn't been lived in for quite some time. Some say it was owned by a woman that just couldn't let go of it. Over the years the doors fell off and the windows broke and they fell out. The yard became overgrown and turned brown along with the tree that stood out front even withered and died. The women owner still did not want to give up the house of where she grew up. If you look through the open windows and doors, you will see a family picture.
About the Creator
Mark Graham
I am a person who really likes to read and write and to share what I learned with all my education. My page will mainly be book reviews and critiques of old and new books that I have read and will read. There will also be other bits, too.
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More stories from Mark Graham and writers in Critique and other communities.
The Carol Burnett Show
I was just watching an old episode of a television variety show known as 'The Carol Burnett Show' on Yahoo.com. I remember watching this show as a young child with my parents and siblings. The episode that I was watching was when Tim Conway was on the show for the second time. He wasn't a regular part of the cast yet. Not sure of the exact date of this episode but I think it was the early 1970's for Carol was wearing a skirt that was crocheted and making jokes about it. From what I was able to watch Harvey Korman played Col. Flanders and Carol played a character that was interviewing him. 'The Carol Burnett Show' always made fun of various commercials of the time as well as even having song and dance times with her guest stars. These were the days of the prime-time variety shows as well as a few daytime shows that were like Carol's show like 'The Mike Douglas Show' or even 'The Merv Griffin Show' if I remember right for that show was on after I had to go to bed at 9PM for it was usually on a school night. Who thinks these kinds of shows would make it on television today for they were quite fun to watch especially Carol's show.
By Mark Grahamabout a year ago in Critique
The Ignorance Tax: Why Your 20$ Gourmet Burger is a Scam
A friend of mine charges twenty dollars for a piece of ground beef and two slices of bread. He calls it a "burger." In private, he calls it an "Ignorance Tax." We’ve reached a point where basic survival is marketed as a luxury, and frying an egg is treated like cold fusion. While the West pays a premium to be fed like infants, I’m sitting in my kitchen in Croatia, watching the world forget how to live—one overpriced burger at a time. *** Last night, I committed a miracle. At least, that’s what a modern-day lifestyle influencer would call it. I actually made dinner. In about fifteen minutes—roughly the time it takes an average Californian to find their car keys—I produced six gourmet burgers. Beef, veggie, and fish. All sourced from a local organic shop where the ingredients actually remember being alive. I toasted the buns with ghee, caramelized some onions, and watched the local cheese melt over the patties like a slow, delicious tragedy. I assembled them with the precision of a watchmaker: a thin slice of tomato, a leaf of lettuce, a pickle. Total cost? About the same as a mediocre latte in San Francisco. My wife, my daughter, and I “suffocated” ourselves in the goodness of it. It was healthy. It was fast. It was, frankly, a joke how easy it was. And that’s the problem. The Teeth-Brushing Paradox I’ve been cooking since I was fifteen. Not because I had a “passion” for culinary arts, but because life is a series of unfortunate events. My parents were divorced and busy; I lived with my grandfather, a man who viewed a stove as a decorative object. So, I cooked to survive. To me, cooking is like brushing your teeth. You don’t stand in front of the mirror and congratulate yourself for five minutes because you managed to clean your molars. You just do it so your mouth doesn’t rot. In Croatia—this little patch of earth that used to be Yugoslavia—a man in the kitchen isn’t a “sensitive modern hero.” He’s just a hungry guy. Roughly 90% of the people here, even the kids obsessed with TikTok, can actually whip up a decent meal. We are like the Italians, but with more cynicism and slightly worse PR. We value the origin of the food, but more importantly, we value the “table.” In the States, dinner is the big event. Here, it’s lunch. Even in the middle of a workday, the world stops. We drink coffee, we eat, we talk. The capitalist model of “time is money” hasn’t completely strangled us yet. We still think time is for living. Charging a Tax on Ignorance When I lived in California, I felt like a wizard from a superior civilization. I watched people—educated, successful people—treat the act of frying an egg like it was complex engineering. If someone “cooked” for you, it usually meant they’d taken three semi-finished products, dumped them in a pan, added too much salt, and called it a masterpiece. The flavors were aggressive, the execution was sloppy, and the conversation about the meal lasted longer than the eating itself. I have a friend who owns a burger joint. I asked him once, “Why the hype? It’s a piece of meat between two pieces of bread. Why are people paying $20 for this?” He looked at me with the weary eyes of a man who understands the decline of Western civilization. “They don’t know how to cook,” he said. “That’s it. To you and me, it’s nothing. But I’m not charging for the meat. I’m charging a tax on their ignorance. I charge for the service of doing what they’ve forgotten how to do.” The Survival of the Simplest We’ve turned a basic survival skill into a luxury “experience.” We’ve made it so expensive and so hyped that we’ve lost the simple reflex of feeding ourselves. Knowing your way around a kitchen is no longer just a domestic chore—it is the ultimate act of rebellion. It’s a stand against a system that wants to sell you back your own autonomy at a 500% markup. Back in my kitchen, my family is full, the dishes are done, and I didn’t even notice I was “cooking.” I was just hanging out. Maybe I’m ready to become a professional chef. Or maybe the rest of the world is just ready to admit they’ve forgotten how to live. Either way, the burger was great—and it didn't cost me twenty dollars to realize it.
By Feliks Karić7 days ago in Critique
Comments (2)
I like the way the old house can also be a symbol of the old woman. Lovely little piece.
I feel for old neglected houses as if they are uncared for babies.