Back when I was a boy, before there was a Wal-Mart or Amazon, our family went Christmas shopping the old-fashioned way. Once every year, the basement of the local hardware store transformed into a magical toy chest where me and my sisters would Oh and Ah over the toys that now graced the metal shelves of the Hugh Saum’s Store.
Continue reading Toys in the Basement
Something just dawned on me today. I’ve spent the last 7 or 8 or 9 days sitting with my Dad in the hospital (the dates and days of the week have become a blur). As I order his meals, press the required call button for help or speak with the doctors, nurses and techs, the beeps and buzzers and pagers are muted from time to time by the moans and coughs and groans of his floormates. Continue reading The Circle of Life
Sunshine, a six-pack of beer, and a swimmin’ hole.
It’s not like Zack and his friends didn’t have a chlorinated, public pool a few blocks from their houses in town, but the newly discovered swimmin’ hole some ten miles out of town was much more entertaining. The Lil’ Wolf Hole was hidden from the World by a thick grove of trees, just a muddied dirt path away from a busy highway and what they considered normal. Continue reading The Kiss
Last summer, the neighbor people asked me to walk their dog while they were away for a long, three-day weekend. The only time that I had ever seen the little furbag yappy dog was when I was going to fetch my morning’s newspaper and she’d try to disprove Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, where-in the larger, smarter species would squash the crap out of the one-pound, little furry annoying rodent-like animal. Continue reading Just Walking the Dog
You probably don’t know Alberta or Craig or Gerald or my cousin Patty, or any of the other voices heard in this month’s installment of Christmas Music all year-long. If one were singing in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, your voice may be masked over by the vast numbers of fellow choir members. But not in your typical small town church. Continue reading Christmas Music In May
Back when I was a boy! (as I pull-up my trousers and speak like an older man:) Life was simple for a teenager growing up in Small Town U.S.A. In 1978, the population of Woodstock, Virginia was somewhere around 2500 people. Continue reading Our Jericho Mile
Not to be a downer going into the weekend, when moods are supposed to be giddy with happiness at the prospect of two days off after a hard week of work, but I just had to type this one up. Continue reading Good Night Adam
