Category: Childhood
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Where Are The Castles In The Sky?
When I was a young boy, my mother would walk with me down through our backyard and toward the river. There was a decline on the property that, in very old times, was the bank of our river. Now, it was simply a gentle slope down to a lawn that took my father decades to…
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The Night Of The Living AA’s: Report #3
I’m sitting on the sofa in our screened-in porch listening to the rain falling, heavily and with vigor, on our deck, roof and the new leaves of the maples. I want another mug of Dorset tea, but that would mean going into the kitchen one more time. I’m reluctant to do that. There is something…
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A Rock, A Pumpkin And The Grateful Dead
“May I top you up?” –Anonymous bartender. “You can’t top that!” –Patrick Egan People like to put things on top of things. Nature likes to just leave things where they were put originally. I remember one afternoon, in mid-October, 1997, (if you…
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Unfortunate Souls
One afternoon, in the late 19th Century, the fifteen year old brother of Maria Moreno complained about the way she was dancing. She got angry. His response was to say: “So, shoot me.” Maria, who was sixteen went into her house and brought her father’s rifle. She shot and killed her brother. He should have…
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I Heard The Secrets Of The Grackle’s Song
[Image: Google search] A short time ago, perhaps a week, maybe more, I spent a few days in Austin, Texas. We were visiting with a gentleman, William, that I had met during a writers workshop in Westport, New York in October, 2012. He has been a good friend and faithful follower of my blogs since…
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At The Alamo: All The History I Needed Was On My Pajamas
[Source: Google search] I grew up in a time when kids had heroes. Mythic heroes. These days, it seems like anyone who performs his or her duties is a “hero”. It’s fair to say that most children, throughout history, had their own heroes. The ancient Greek boys had their Spartans and the Irish youth had…
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Night Of The Living Entropy
[Just to give you the right perspective. We are a small fish in a large sea of RV’s] [en-tro-py n, pl -pies 1 : the degree of disorder in a system 2 : an ultimate state of inert uniformity] —Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary and Thesaurus, 2014 ed. I recently completed reading Deep South by Paul Theroux.…
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Coal For Christmas
I am a grandfather now, feeling every ache and sadness of my sixty-eighth year. The stories that my father told me about his father have taken on new meanings. I’m the old one now. I am the carrier of the family history. When a recollection of a family event comes to mind, be it a…
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The Scent Of Christmas Caught Me By Surprise
There is a chain of markets in Florida called Publix. It’s employee-owned and from what I read in the local paper, Wal-Mart hates them. But that’s another story. I was browsing the aisles in my local Publix for some fruit to put in my cereal. I found blueberries but they’re from Peru. Don’t they grow…
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After Dinner/Up In The Sky
When we were kids we called them vaportrails. Now, I call them contrails. Those streaks across the sky made from the jet engines of jet planes. Either term is okay. It’s simply the condensation of the water from the exhaust of the plane, turning into visible water vapor. It wouldn’t be incorrect to say…
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