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Yarb-Doctor

There’s a word from the Southern heartwood of language—yarb-doctor. A healer of roots and weeds, a whisperer to leaves and bark, moving softly through pine-shadowed towns with a pouch of dried comfrey and sassafras. These were not men of science, not marked by degrees or clipped vowels. They were men and women of instinct and touch, living by rain rhythms, hawthorn folklore, and creeks that told secrets.

To speak “yarb-doctor” is to remember that not all care came from clean white linen or formal learning. Some of it came from memory handed down in whispers, from knowledge stored in callused fingers and the way a wind shifted before illness.

We’ve hidden these words behind progress, locked them away like old letters in attic boxes too faded to read but too precious to burn. Yet in “yarb-doctor,” we hear a culture that trusted the earth, that believed healing might come from something wild, something half-known, something deeply human—raw and unmodern, with just enough magic to matter.

Tailgating: Welcome to the Parking Lot Church of Pain and Nachos

Ever try explaining “tailgating” to someone from another country? “So you gather in a parking lot... hours before the game... to eat hotdogs next to your car... and it's a celebration?” Yeah. It’s a ritualized pre-battle feast, except instead of swords and shields, we have foam fingers and lukewarm beer.

It’s tribal. It’s ancient. It’s American. Because we need to stake a claim—we were here, we grilled meat on this asphalt, we believed our team would win despite all evidence to the contrary.

And it’s not even about football. Football is background noise. What we’re really saying is: “This is my family, and this is how we show love—by arguing whether the quarterback sucks while inhaling 3,000 calories before noon.”

These are sacred spaces. The stadium is a temple, the tailgate a church picnic with less forgiveness. It’s one of the last approved forms of communal madness. Your team loses? You weep into a solo cup. They win? You burn your shirt in ecstasy. Either way, you're back next week.

Recess: Then and Later

In 1957, kids hurled dodgeballs like vengeful gods during recess. Cheeks pink, knees scabbed, lungs pulling in air like it was going out of business. The bell rang, and they filed back inside to learn about the Louisiana Purchase and how to duck under a desk if the Soviets dropped the sun on us. Most of the desks were just particle board, by the way. Safe as a paper umbrella in a meteor storm.

Now, the balls are foam. Soft like cake. Recess is supervised by someone with a whistle and a clipboard. Nobody keeps score. Kids are told to breathe if they feel mad. They’re also told about photosynthesis and internet safety, which is fair—life’s changed.

But here’s the kicker: back then, the world was terrifying and the games were brutal. Now, the world’s still terrifying—they just padded the dodgeballs.

Evolution, maybe. Or denial in gym shorts. Either way, we keep tossing things at each other, hoping we miss just right.

Ghosts in the Rearview Mirror

On this day (June 12), America once again proved it can’t sit still for five minutes without reinventing itself—or at least falling over in a new and interesting way. In 1963, Medgar Evers was assassinated. A man trying to make the world a little less awful gets shot for the trouble. It’s the kind of thing that makes you want to sit under the table with an old kettle and a bottle of gin until things improve, which of course they never do—but the gin helps.

Then skip to 1987, when someone stood in Berlin and told a wall to knock it off. Not even in the country, mind you, but America was there in spirit, flinging metaphors like confetti at a wedding no one really wanted to attend.

And in 1994, a white Bronco sped through Los Angeles like a confused ice cream van, chased by the whole media landscape on rollerblades. You couldn’t write it, but they did—on every channel, for months.

So yes, June 12: odd, heavy, and oddly full.

Extra-Terrestrials and Exit Wounds

On this day (June 11), America did what it does best—woke up, spilled its coffee on history, and somehow called it progress.

In 1979, a man called John Wayne died, which sounds like something that should've happened on a mountain while he stared down a bear made of whiskey and unresolved trauma. Not quietly in a hospital bed. Still, the myth outlived the man, because America doesn’t let its icons go gently; they get reincarnated as breakfast cereals and museum gift shop bookmarks.

And on June 11, 1982, the film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was released. A story about a small, shriveled space-being who looks like a leftover sausage roll and just wants to phone his mum. And yet America wept. They wept like someone had just taken their last Twinkie. Which, come to think of it, is probably how they’d mourn most things. But genuinely—how strange and lovely that a nation could fall for a scabby-legged puppet just trying to love and levitate.

June 11: where cowboys die and aliens bicycle into your heart.

If You Only Know One Thing About Harriet Tubman

If you only know one thing about Harriet Tubman, know this: she was the human embodiment of “you thought that was brave? Watch this.” Standing five feet tall and born into slavery, she escaped to freedom—and then went back. Over and over. Nineteen times. She didn’t have Google Maps or a cozy travel-sized backpack full of trail mix. She navigated by the North Star and guts alone, leading 70 enslaved people to freedom using the Underground Railroad like it was her personal mission (because it was). She later served as a spy, nurse, and scout during the Civil War, which means that if courage were a college, she’d be tenured faculty, president, and dean.

Tubman refused payment for most of her work, and still, she demanded justice with the force of someone who’d already walked through hell and just wouldn’t let others stay behind. So, if you only know one thing about her, know that she didn’t just lead people to freedom—she redefined what freedom could mean.

Tailgating: America’s Sacred Pre-Battle Feast

There’s a thing Americans do called “tailgating”—and no, it's not reckless driving on the freeway, though that’s also an art form here. I’m talking about the ritual where people gather hours before a football game in a parking lot, set up grills, crack beers, and party like the apocalypse is scheduled for 4th down.

They’re not even in the stadium yet. That part costs $200. This is pre-worship. Worship of what? A team, a logo, a dream that maybe, just maybe, this year the overpaid gladiators in spandex will bring joy to the region. It’s tribal. It’s pagan. It's beautiful and absurd.

You’ve got people shotgunning beers at 9AM next to toddlers in face paint. It’s like Burning Man mated with a NASCAR pit stop. And it’s all about community—because the game is less the thing. What matters is that smoke, that banter, that shared insanity. This is where Americans touch truth: in a Walmart parking lot, clutching Coors and hope, before the coin even flips.

The Slow Art of Honeyfuggle

The word is honeyfuggle—a sultry little whisper from the folds of Southern language, curled like cigarette smoke around the tongue. It means to deceive through flattery, to coax a soul into believing they’re desired when really they’re needed, or worse, convenient. It has the sweat of a porch swing summer, the thick scent of jasmine and desperation.

You find honeyfuggle in the smile of a man who’s never worked a day but always eats, or the tilt of a belle’s chin when she wants something more than kindness. It tells you about a culture where charm isn't just a virtue—it’s a weapon, ribboned and sweet as molasses. You don’t ask straight, you coax. You don’t fight, you murmur until the storm breaks.

It’s a word meant for shadowed parlors and the slow drawl of evenings when truth couldn’t quite bear the light. It’s fading now, like so many things carved by hand and heart.

Kentucky Dirt and the Ghost of Aunt Mabel

In Kentucky, there's this old superstition about graveyard dirt. Like, if someone sprinkles it on your doorstep—boom! You're cursed. And not in the 'my lash extensions fell out' way. Like, real ghost-is-now-your-roommate stuff. People would scrape dirt from a loved one’s grave and keep it in a jar. Because what says 'Grandma’s legacy' like a cursed urn in your sock drawer?

And I asked a lady in Louisville, “Why would you carry graveyard dirt around?” She’s like, “For protection!” Girl, what are you protecting—from vampires or a bad Yelp review?

Apparently, if you get the dirt from the right grave, it can bring good luck. But if you mess up and grab dirt from the wrong one? You're gonna need more than sage and a FaceTime with your psychic.

Seriously, only in America do we mix superstition with landscaping. “Welcome to my home. That ficus? It’s watered with tears. That jar? It’s Aunt Mabel.”

Sleep tight, y’all. Kentucky’s dirt knows your name.

A Very American Mosaic of June the Sixth

On this day (6 June), peculiar clocks ticked and history lost its spectacles somewhere in the margins.

In 1933, America unveiled the world's first drive-in movie theatre in Camden, New Jersey. It was an era when cars were made of steel, not whims, and the idea of watching a 40-foot face emote wildly while trapped in a tin box with your in-laws seemed like a triumph of both science and masochism. The invention quickly took off, mostly because popcorn tastes better with the faint hum of a distant engine and the knowledge that your radio might spontaneously explode if tuned incorrectly.

Then in 1966, a fella named James Meredith set off alone on a walk through Mississippi to promote civil rights, proving that sometimes the most powerful marches start with one stubborn foot.

Meanwhile, in the alternate dimension of entertainment, 1984 saw the release of Tetris. The Soviet Union accidentally invented the world's most addictive digital puzzle, proving once and for all that falling blocks could unite humanity in collective frustration across all timezone lines.

Turducken: The Feathered Inception

If you described turducken to someone who hadn’t grown up within the borders of the United States, they’d assume it was either a medieval punishment or a typo on a deli menu. A deboned chicken stuffed into a deboned duck stuffed into a deboned turkey—layered like some unholy poultry matryoshka. Imagine the conversations that led to this: “You know what this turkey needs? Another bird inside it.” “Two,” says someone else, and the room nods.

It’s not the flavour that’s horrifying—though, when three creatures join forces in your digestive tract, rebellion seems inevitable—it’s the sheer audacity. The culinary equivalent of trying to read three books at once, aloud, while riding a unicycle.

And yet Americans devour it, especially during Thanksgiving, with smiles and gravy. It’s festive excess in edible form. Somewhere, a chicken dreams of vengeance. Somewhere else, a duck files a formal complaint. Meanwhile, the turkey just sighs and accepts its fate as outerwear.

Intercourse, Pennsylvania: Not What You Think

Okay, there's a town in Pennsylvania called Intercourse. Yeah. INTERCOURSE. And it’s not a nightclub, it’s not a sketchy motel with hourly rates—it’s just a wholesome Amish town, with a name that makes it sound like the setting of a very specific type of Netflix documentary.

Now, apparently, Intercourse got its name in 1814 because back then, the word ‘intercourse’ meant like, pleasant social interaction. You know, innocent things like “good morrow, neighbor!” and not... whatever the hell this is now. But that’s also what you’d say if you were trying to rebrand a terrible decision. Like, “No no, we picked ‘Intercourse’ because it just means friendly chit-chat! Totally normal!”

Meanwhile, the neighboring towns are Bird-in-Hand and Blue Ball. I’m sorry, is this a Quaker-themed burlesque show or a map?

So now you’ve got a whole tourist industry based solely on people taking selfies next to the 'Welcome to Intercourse' sign. Because in America, if your town name sounds dirty, congratulations—you’re a roadside attraction with a gift shop!

The House That Blinked

The house on Goatman Road still leans like it's trying to escape its own foundation. In Denton County, Texas, it waits—smothered by overgrown brush and the scratchy sound of wind through rust-bitten chain-link. Folklore says a satyr-like creature stalks the bridge nearby, the Goatman, but the house is worse. It grins when no one’s inside.

Built by a taxidermist in 1913, the structure once housed both family and stifled, poorly preserved oddities: frogs with human teeth, cats with wings stitched on. The man claimed the animals whispered in their jars. After his disappearance—just gone, no note, no decay—his daughter turned it into a bed-and-breakfast for cryptid enthusiasts. That lasted four months. Guests reported hearing chewing behind the walls and waking up with feathers in their mouths.

Locals say the house breathes. It exhales rot and iron joy. Teenagers dare each other to sleep there; none last past midnight. One swears he saw the house blink. Not the lights. The house.

It doesn’t ask you to believe. It waits for your questions and eats them.

The Lost Trousers of Justice

The man had purchased pants. Gray slacks, the sort clerks wear to homogenize their dignity. He left them at a dry cleaner in Washington, D.C., and when he returned, they were gone. Misplaced, perhaps. Human error. But the loss ignited something deeper than fabric—it was the principle, he said. He sued the dry cleaners.

His claim: $67 million.

For pants.

He argued emotional distress, deception, and breach of satisfaction signs hanging on the wall. One even read 'Satisfaction Guaranteed. He found betrayal in polyester, cruelty in customer service. The courtroom echoed with the gravity of imagined injustices. He represented himself, in solemn, meticulous despair.

Years passed. The case waned. Judges frowned. The pants reappeared, or perhaps they never left. But the lawsuit stood, like a monument to something no one could name—a threadbare cry for justice in a world where cloth and meaning had unraveled.

What he sought was not trousers but recompense from the void. He did not win.

But for a time, the law listened to a man about his pants.

American Law: Powered by Curds and Paranoia

In South Dakota, it was once illegal to fall asleep in a cheese factory. Not drunk driving a forklift through a cheddar aisle—just napping. Imagine that: cops crouched behind vats of Monterey Jack, whispering, “He’s nodding off... get the taser.” Who lobbied for this? Was there a rogue napper ruining the integrity of the Colby Jack? “Sorry sir, you’re under arrest for horizontal dairy loitering.”

It’s the legislative equivalent of writing laws during a fever dream. What happened in that factory? A lactose-induced Sleeping Beauty scenario? A man wakes up twenty years later encased in Gouda shouting, “What year is it?!” Maybe it was just an overzealous dairy boss who hated workers having dreams—either the sleeping kind or the having-a-better-life kind.

And South Dakota’s not even famous for cheese! Wisconsin must’ve looked over the border and said, “Aw bless, they’re trying.” Maybe next they'll ban blinking in a butter churn.