Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

You may believe that ghosts don't exist because you've never seen one, but eyes aren't the only indicators

Published October 31, 2025 12:00PM (EDT)

I’ve never referred to my mom’s dad as grandpa. Not grampa. And certainly not grandfather. To me, and everyone else in my family, he’s always been papa.

A lifelong Illinois farmer and lover of maintaining a stretch of land, big or small, papa must have gotten a kick out of me buying my own home in 2019, situated on a 3,615-square-foot lot in New Orleans and raised up just ever so on brick columns, holding on for dear life in the years of punishing weather it’s withstood since I became its steward.

Spending most of my formative summers attached to the heels of his boots as he puttered around in the various barns and sheds of his farm, flanked by walls of corn on two sides and soy beans and a crick (not creek) on the others, the smell of my papa is cellular to me. Good, warm, dark and healthy soil. Dutch Masters cigars. Motor oil, dispersed among the tractors, pickup truck and the red motorcycle he’d take me out on some afternoons. The smell of the breeze through the apple trees on a summer day. And Chiclets, a constant rattling in his front shirt pocket. This combination meant comfort and security to me, more so than........

© Salon