When I was a callow youth, I thought that going to “Clown College” would be great. Ringling Brothers ran one in Florida. I also had always wanted to juggle. I still thought that being able to juggle would be great long after I’d made the delicate wire walk, skipping clown college to go instead to […]

In the early 1960s, I was a scrawny teenager looking to drink in all I could to make the leap from small-town elementary school to small-town high school in an adjoining town. My father had a new, very small construction company, he having made his own leap from carpenter in the employ of a contractor […]

Scene One I am going through the house collecting dirty clothes and see that the rosemary plant on the windowsill needs watering. It is tucked in the corner of the room next to the La-Z-Boy. I stuff the laundry under one arm, grab the small copper watering can with the other, then somehow manage to […]

Joan and I left St. Louis with our new bachelor’s degrees from a couple of Midwestern colleges, mine in English, hers in history, and headed to Boston. She had a brand-new 1970 Volkswagon, a graduation present from her parents. She’d been planning this move for months. I simply hopped in her car as she headed […]

While going through a closet, cleaning out some things we never use, we found some stuffed animals that had sat on the shelf for years. One of the items was a little stuffed animal made of green corduroy with a funny face glued on it, which brought back some fond memories. I was in my […]

It was 1957 and I was graduating from the eighth grade at Madison Junior High School. In those days I was considered a good student, got good grades and pretty much did what I was told. You might even say I was quite patriotic. So much so that I received the American Legion School Award: […]

I sat in the church pew with my mom, my brother and sister. It was a typical Sunday morning at Saint Dom’s Catholic Church. Light from the stained glass above the pulpit cast a glow that seemed like holy light on Father Rich while he delivered his sermon. It was classic “fire and brimstone.” Sinners […]

At the age of 5, I announced to my parents that I wanted to learn how to read music. I wowed them with what they thought was my “absolute pitch” because without looking, I could identify all eight notes of one octave, starting with middle C. They rushed me to a guest organist who was […]

Special places. Many of us have them. A childhood neighborhood, a ballpark where Little League games were played, an island community where grandparents resided. My special place of over 58 years was camp on Rocky Pond in the rural town of Orland. Camp consisted of a primitive, one-room abode without electricity or plumbing. Most agreeable […]

Old ladies scare me. Powdery souls, half material body, half ghost. Faded, wrinkled, shrunken like old bedsheets. Invisible lives lived in half-step measure, shuffled into insignificance by the cool hand of time. Blood-red lipstick smeared beyond lip lines. Lopsided eye linings. Rouged cheeks bleeding streaks of strawberry pink. Long before I became one myself, ageism […]