The following is a work of fiction. Frankie used to refer to the Shady Acres as The Short Timers club. Each person there was not far from a game-ending heart attack or stroke. Frankie had developed an uncanny ability to foresee who was on the verge. Or maybe […]
The following is a work of fiction My first kiss with Carla happened at the State Fair. The whole thing looked like something a guy might plan ahead to do, just so he’d have a moving story to tell his kids someday, maybe even his grandkids. “We were […]
The following is a work of fiction. I only once saw Frankie emotionally shaken, and it didn’t alter my respect for him; in fact, it reinforced it. We got to talking about a friend of his he’d lost during the war. The guy’s name was Joe Stern, a […]
The following is a work of fiction. The first time I went to church with Carla, I went, of course, because I loved her. I wasn’t used to attending church; my family never went, except maybe at Easter time. I’d been invited in the past; some guy from […]
The following is a work of fiction. Part 1 here Part 2 here World War II History was the first class I circled on my community college enrollment form. While I was growing up, Dad watched countless films on the subject. When I was a kid, it annoyed […]
The following is a work of fiction. Part 1 here “…for there are other passions, deeper passions; you know this. You saw fit to sow them there. Sometimes I wish I was not so aware of their presence–beneath the crude folds of my temporal flesh, beneath even the […]
Yesterday, during a characteristically hectic day at work, I forced myself to escape for 30 precious minutes to indulge in some trans-fat sustenance and a little word swapping with the Good Lord: I shouldn’t be here. It’s been busy at work, and we’re down a man. I’m breaking […]
Is Christmas truly the “Most Wonderful Time of the Year?” It is for many, I suppose. For others, it’s the worst. For me, it’s the time of pre-wonderful. It is a candy-coated appetizer to the main course – the series of days I’ve come to describe as “The […]
Jesus, if you were here with me now, I would hug you fiercely. A day or an hour or ten minutes from now, I might ignore you or jeer you with sarcasm or scream at you in anger, but were you here this second, I would grip you […]
I’ve thought for some time now that, given the current escalation of political malevolence, I would repost this from roughly a year ago, written during the height of the presidential election campaign. A year later, I am attending the same conference I was at when it was first […]
