He was 8 years old when he found a Hanson model 1512 postal scale in the trash bin behind Daffy Dan’s on Polsky Street. He took it home, cleaned it off and began weighing little things around the house. The Hanson 1512 scale had a maximum weight limit of 20 pounds. He was careful not…
In 1961 Michael McCafferty did the unimaginable. He opened a place behind Lawson’s where kids, nearly every day, played Cowboys and Indians from 8 in the morning until it was time for them to go home. This was no ordinary Cowboys and Indians theme park — that is, if there were other geniuses in the…
Even though Rick and Frankie couldn’t afford to go places, the billboards that swallowed their houses took them to other worlds. They’d sit up on the hill that overlooked the valley and write stories about people who wear fancy clothes and sip Champagne in luxury cars. Frankie wasn’t “the girl next door” even though she…
Summer was our furlough after ten months of tyrannical rule by the nuns at St. Agnes. It was the 1970s and every boy in South Newburg had two goals in common: play baseball as much as possible and grow our hair as long as our favorite players. John Lowenstein. Lee Mazzilli. John “The Count” Montefusco…
Tom Petty: Thanks for coming over, guys. I truly appreciate our little chats. Tonight, there are three topics I’d like to get off my chest and into the great wide open. Bob Dylan: I, too, appreciate our little chats, Tom. I can’t wait to hear what you want to talk about! Roy Orbison: Yeah, getting…
My mom was born in 1946. People didn’t have Facebook back then, but they had faces and they were usually buried inside books. One day, while playing at recess at St. Wenceslaus School, my mom had a vision. Jesus and his apostles were gathered at the last supper playing with space age “phones” instead of…
In the spring of 1981, members of the Australian rock band Men at Work were holed up in a house recording a song they hoped would become a #1 hit. Even though the band had experienced some success with Keypunch Operator and Down Under, lead singer Colin Hay and his mates had not made it…
Sal: I hate him. Colin: Yeah, especially his wind chills and arctic blasts. Sal: He’s like the devil, only colder. Colin: I heard he reads Jack London and laughs when the old man dies in To Build a Fire. Sal: I heard Liam Neeson put a number on him. He called him and used that…
Do you think U2 would have an easier time getting there if Bono used GPS where the streets have no name? I bet it would be really hard for a comedian to tell jokes in front of crickets. Readers might have been appalled if Lee Harper and Truman Capote collaborated on a book and called…
It happens every Christmas. A cheap, insensitive curmudgeon named Ebenezer Scrooge gets spooked by a dead business partner named Jacob Marley and three ghosts. He becomes nice. Then at some point down the road he gets mean again. Until the following Christmas when he gets nice – again. How soon after Christmas does Scrooge fall off…
When I bite into a generic peppermint patty, I get the sensation that I am sinking in an arctic abyss while hypothermia wraps its coma-inducing claws around my lifeless body. When I bite into a generic peppermint patty, I get the sensation that I am standing naked with my back against a brick wall facing…
I am 50 feet in, chained by my ankle to the base of a tree. On clear days I can see people in the street: joggers and power walkers, mothers pushing strollers, boys skateboarding down a hill. How long have I been here? The newspaper would say 9 years. BRIGHT YOUNG EXECUTIVE, 31, DISAPPEARS. I…
i make words go vroom. 