Way back when, a friend and I were sitting behind the wired backstop to the church camp’s dusty softball field, playing chess on a small travel board, while waiting for the game in progress to end. We had cleverly positioned ourselves so both of us coul...
The weak light from a leaden sky revealed a scattering of forlorn leaves clinging to the dark, wet limbs of trees bordering a deserted playground and half-empty parking lot. Cold, misty rain and swirling winds hastened the inevitable outcome of this doome...
“...and in local sports, the Mets and Yankees both dropped road…” Debbie Morris automatically switched off the alarm radio she’d carefully set last night to turn on later than usual and glanced at her wristwatch. Satisfied she was now, as planned, exa...
Folks always claimed ‘Buck’ Granderson got his nickname because he still had the first dollar he ever made. It wasn’t true, at least not the part about his name. I had it on very good authority that his parents, two otherwise sober and responsible individ...
Listening In The Rain I'm a good listener; always have been. Especially here inside the cemetery—just sitting in my truck, listening to the rain, hearing it tell the story, and waiting for Holly. We don’t have nice winter weather around here, just cold an...
The Tumultuous Tale of the Tormented Terrier Well, let me tell you, it was like this. Once upon a time, our humble hovel was being run by the daughter-unit’s pet, a small, cute, cuddly and constantly yapping Yorkshire Terrier that answered to the name, Pu...
Newly polished toenails safely propped on the crowded coffee table, Darlene Barnes let out a long plume of cigarette smoke and waited for her friend to come back from the kitchen. Waiting in silence, however, had never been her 'thing'. The thirty-somethi...
“You guys are nuts.” The Skeptic was in rare form as the four men studied the petite singer flitting around on the dim stage. “I mean, sure she’s cute, but in a small-town high school cheerleader sort of way. No way is she this smoking’ hot sex object y...
For the benefit of any unsuspecting reader, let me state now that this is NOT an article about how one might become a contented courtesan or smiling strumpet. Nope, not even a titillated trollop. Sorry about any confusion, honest. Truth be told, this assa...
Now and Forever: a love story The dream was back--so were the eyes. They hovered in an angry sky just above the horizon, seeing everything but focusing on nothing. Amy knew those eyes—knew a time when they’d been filled with happiness and a love of life....
How’s by you, Grady Lee? Funniest thing happened yesterday. This nice lady from the Veterans Administration stopped by and said what I really needed, I mean with my having gone from hard of seeing to being blinder than any known bat, was one of those so-c...
On a hot Friday afternoon in the summer of 1970, a young nursing student left work at the VA hospital, and hurried out to the nearby bus stop on First Avenue. The usual stop-and-go Friday traffic appeared to be stuck on stop. From the open windows of a gy...
The official plan, as carefully explained to all parental units, had called for Amy and Libby to share a motel room. The guys would stay with Mark’s roommate who was supposed to be in summer school. In reality, Mark’s roommate had just flunked out. And...
Alexandria, a small, nondescript city on the Red River in central Louisiana, is the symbolic checkpoint separating the state’s French, Catholic south from its Scots-Irish, Protestant north. In the pre-interstate days, a two-lane highway weaved its way s...
The phone wouldn't stop ringing. Amy, sitting at the table on the other side of the kitchen, eating a bologna-on-white-with-mayonnaise sandwich and heading into what she sensed would be one of the steamier parts of,"The Carpetbaggers," tried to ignore...
