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DID WE PUNCH AND HAMMER AND JAB EACH OTHER as children thrashing and rambling a large family in a small house filled with brothers and one older sister with sharp bony fists and no reluctance to use them? We did. Did we use implements like long whippy maple branches and mom’s bamboo garden poles and dad’s old sagging tennis rackets and redolent pieces of oozy lumber stolen from the new […]

ON A WINTER EVENING, I sat in my parked 4Runner, alone. From the radio, Top 40 tunes droned. Blowing snow swirled around bundled parents walking from the parking lot toward the high school building. No sense waiting any longer. After dreading this night for days, I rallied the courage to move. Slamming the 4 Runner door, I crunched across the snow-covered parking lot and then hustled through the door. A […]

IT WAS A VERY WARM summer’s evening when my son Dylan set out to check his eclectic collection of homemade snares and traps. Along one of our old stone walls, he found a red squirrel in one of his traps.  The squirrel was apparently suffering from heat exhaustion, and was very lethargic. I was washing pots and pans and watched from the kitchen window as Dylan (accompanied by his little […]

IN NINTH GRADE EVERYTHING CHANGED. It was 1959 and I fell in love with Ricky Nelson, who became an overnight singing star the first time he sang on the television show Ozzie and Harriet.  I played his single, “Poor Little Fool,” on my RCA 45 record player, swaying with the music and imagining his eyes looking into mine. He sang his sadness at being jilted, putting me into a trance […]