My father once said, “I don’t care if you love me, as long as you respect me.” My father once said, “If you go to war I’ll pray for your death.” My father once cursed me, in response to my answer to his question, “Why do you think I spent all that money on you?”…
I took a ride yesterday, the last good day to ride if you like temperatures in the seventies. A very windy day. I didn’t know how windy until I got out in the country. Then I knew. It blew me off my line, that invisible line you travel left of center near the opposing traffic…
In 1964 my mother bought a clock in the city where we lived. A clock to stand in the hall, purchased with money when her mother died she received. Not a lot of money. Enough to buy the clock when I had only just begun to enter high school. The clock ticked in the hall.…
I think it is important to go home a winner. I think it is important to allow no dream to die, else it is no dream worth dreaming. If a dream dies, it is mortal and no dream should be made of such rotten stuff. We live in a world of change, but what makes…
There’s something called the Zone. It’s a place runners talk about, mostly runners. They talk about entering the Zone when they’ve run a long way and their body wants to stop, but they keep on running and there’s a Wall, but they run through the Wall and they enter the Zone. It has something to…
This is a parable. It’s a warning. It’s a piece of advice. It’s the truth. I went to a store today that specializes in electronics. They sell anything related to everything you can plug in or charge or turn on and off and all of those electronic devices are becoming more and more complicated and…
Today I felt so verklempt. You know the feeling. Even if you’re not Scandinavian. I got an idea. I attached a set of rabbit ear antennas to my manual typewriter, just behind the platen where it wouldn’t interfere with the keys and by golly. What a difference it makes. I’ve got another idea. ƒ
We lost Ole day before yesterday. Tuesday. One year to the week after we brought him home. A Bernese Mountain Dog rescued from a derelict property in the presence of adults who didn’t feed him because, “He wasn’t our dog.” He weighed forty-six pounds at one year of age. He should have weighed eighty. When…
My father said to me, “Stay off motorcycles. Stay out of bars.” After I bought my motorcycle I said to my father, “One out of two ain’t bad.” I rode my motorcycle Thursday. I had not ridden for over a year. I had not taken it out for that length of time and had my…
This happened years ago. It took ten years to happen the first time and now it has been forty-one years more. They add up, but its the same story retold as it will be for others in their time. It’s the same story. I lived on a farm in Iowa and it took me ten…
