I will write this without amendation or revision. It comes from the heart. When I think of my family, when I think of the past I think of what I have been told and what I remember. I don’t research, but I believe and I know what I know from those I loved and one…
In 1915 the ship Endurance of the Earnest Shackleton expedition to Antarctica became trapped and sank in the pack ice of the Weddell Sea. Shackleton’s men abandoned ship and began a 350 mile trek across ice and open water pulling and rowing their lifeboats to Elephant Island. It took them over two months. When they…
I went to a Civil War battlefield recently, a battle for which I had no knowledge. Bentonville, south of Raleigh in North Carolina. There, on March 19-21, 1865, General Joe Johnson and his twenty thousand Confederates met General William Sherman and his sixty thousand Union boys on their way anywhere they wanted. They fought. Three…
United States Copyright Registration Number TXu 2-152-977 The day before a great storm he sat behind the wheel of his old pickup truck before his God with his eyes closed and he considered all the necessary preparations. He had made them. Now he wanted to go somewhere, because men like him want a breather before…
It’s Christmas, so what does my neighbor do? He puts a ratty old chair out on the curb. That’s right, a ratty old chair. Now, you might think he’d wait until after Christmas, but no. Right before Christmas he puts a ratty old chair on the curb. It’s blue. It contrasts nicely with the snow…
The pandemic has done many things. No, that’s not true. It only does one thing to many things. It destroys. It’s a virus. It doesn’t know what the hell its doing, but its doing it to a lot of things and its doing it to a lot of people who thought they knew what they…
There’s a quilt on the bed. It’s a crazy quilt. It’s what’s called a crazy quilt. You know why it is called by that name? It is called a crazy quilt because it does not follow a pattern. It follows the shape and size of the pieces of cloth of which it is made, the…
“Make it fast,” he said. I tried. “Officer,” I said. “This night is really important for me.” I broke the law. He knew it. I knew it. We both knew it. My girlfriend didn’t know it. I told her to give me a few minutes on the mezzanine level and she didn’t ask why. She…
I had good parents. They bought me dance lessons. Of course, the lessons they bought me never taught me how to dance. Oh, they taught me how to stand in a line with other boys facing a line of girls across the room and approach en masse to the girl directly across the room, bow…
It’s been twenty-two years so I suppose I can tell the story. “We are living an important and fruitful moment now,” I said. “What?” she asked. I repeated the comment. “We are living an important and fruitful moment now.” “Is that a line from some play?” she asked me. “No,” I said. “I just made…
