When I see the little brass bell on the shelf behind the glass windows atop my grandmother’s secretary desk, I think  “mischief.” One of my fondest memories is visiting my maternal grandmother, Winne, as a child. You see, I wasn’t visiting her at her house; my visits took place at “the castle,” which is what […]

It was Christmas Eve, and Rusty, Deb and I planned to attend midnight Mass at St. William’s Church in Tewksbury. We would ride with the either the Connollys or the other good Catholic family, the Couillards. Our parents were already in bed for the night. Gifts were under the tree, and stockings, with oranges in […]

Some laws are meant to be broken.  Some laws are meant to break us. Take Stapp’s Ironical Paradox and Murphy’s Law, for example. Murphy’s Law sagely observes that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. If you haven’t heard of Stapp’s Ironical Paradox, recognize it possesses even greater insight into the human condition: “The universal […]

After basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, in 1961, I went to the Army Signal School at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, which was close to Eatontown. We all had to do KP (kitchen police – we set up for and cleaned up after meals), which I hated. So I joined the Drum and Bugle […]

I had pals who inspired mischief, and I wanted to get away with the same or better than they did. I know this particular mischief wasn’t really clever, and it didn’t turn destructive, or I’d never ’fess up to it in a family newspaper. Much of the time it started in garages when our parents […]

We rarely went to the beach when I was a child, but one day Mom promised my 4-year-old brother, and 5-year-old me, that if the following day was “beach weather,” we’d pack a picnic lunch and spend the day frolicking in the cool waves and building sand castles. The next morning we woke to a […]