One of the disadvantages I’ve found in getting older is not sleeping as well as I did in my youth. Ever since childhood, I’ve had trouble sleeping during times of stress, but now I hardly ever sleep for eight hours straight. Most nights I wake up once, but some nights […]
Continue readingTag Archives: father
On Pillboxes and Parents
One of the things I found as I went through my parents’ memorabilia recently was a little white pillbox made of stone. I had a matching blue pillbox already on my dresser. It wasn’t until I saw the white one that I remembered—my mother gave me the blue version many […]
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Thoughts on Random Photos of the Absaroka Range
In the summer of 2015, when my sister and I went through family memorabilia from our parents’ house, we did a rough sort of our dad’s photographs. We threw the envelopes of negatives and prints into three piles—one for me, one for her, and one for our brother—based on whose […]
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A Story I’ve Rarely Told: The A Minus Incident
I’ve mentioned before that I was one of several valedictorians of my high-school class. The six of us all had 4.0 GPAs. A 4.0 was as high as one could get in our high school—all A grades (A+, A, A-) counted as 4 points. There were no deviations for pluses […]
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Recipe — Lemon Bread
Unlike me, my father liked to cook. In fact, he paid part of his way through college as a short-order cook for his fraternity. When my father traveled and found a food item he liked, he cajoled the cook into giving him the recipe so he could make it himself. […]
Continue readingInfrastructure, circa 1962
There’s been a lot in the news in recent years about infrastructure. Which projects are “shovel ready”? Which will create more jobs? How do we bring our aging roads and bridges into the twenty-first century? When I hear about infrastructure, I think of the development of the interstate highway system […]
Continue readingOn Strings and Things
I’ve written before about what a picky eater I was. Cooked carrots were my worst nemesis, but I also hated all foods with strings. You’d be surprised how many foods have strings. Bananas, for one. Kids are supposed to like bananas, and I did like the taste. But before a […]
Continue readingOn Heffalumps, Hookers, and Humor
Here’s a (sort of) Christmas story I’ve never posted before. I wrote it for a writers’ group holiday party a few years ago. I hope you enjoy it. On Heffalumps, Hookers, and Humor The winter when I was four, I wasn’t supposed to know how to read, but I did. […]
Continue readingMy Parents’ Engagement Party
My parents were married in June 1955, after about seven years of dating—they’d met as high school freshmen and begun dating when they were sophomores. Their relationship survived the remainder of high school and four years at different colleges. Sixty-two years ago this month, in December 1954, during Christmas break […]
Continue readingThe Rest of the Part-Time Story
A few months ago I wrote a post about my father telling me I should take “a nice part-time job” and how angry that made me. This post is a confession—I asked for that advice. Well, not for that advice specifically, but for any advice he could give me during […]
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