I’m not sure if you know this or not, but it’s never wrong to steal a pen.
Filed under: Deep South, education, Everyday, faith, family, humor, life
I can count on one hand the number of things I’ve stolen in my entire life: four. I’m holding up four fingers, at this very moment, even though you can’t see them. But, that’s it: four items. Four, random though purposeful, inconsequential items. One of those items was a candy bar. A Kit-Kat, actually, and it was easily stolen because I used to run the “candy store” between class periods, at my high school. The smart kids got to do everything fun, especially when it involved cash handling. I only stole one candy bar and only the one time because I had convinced myself that...
The table of Christian Things.
Filed under: Deep South, education, Everyday, faith, humor, life, theatre
On some mornings, as I’m entering the Town That Was, aka Scooba, I have a small (though at one time it was) visual delight, usually, to my right, just as I bump over the railroad tracks, situated all alone in front of what may very well be a defunct fire station. And this is what my small (though at one time it was) visual delight consists of: a faded tent, no doubt purchased “as is,” from some desperate funeral home, I imagine. Beneath the tattered green fabric sits a cheap a la Fred’s-Giving-Away-the-Store-again! plastic table precariously atop four brittle fold-out legs. Adorning this table is a...
I can't die here, not this close to the Mennonite bakery.
Filed under: Deep South, faith, family, food, health
I think I almost died last Friday morning, right outside of Macon, Mississippi. The weather was atrocious, as it has been for the past two solid weeks; the rain was torrential (FYI: that's a word on My Favorite Words List, which I keep in my glove compartment), the wind was ridiculous, and the roads held pockets of watery vengeance...but that's not what I thought was I dying from. Because I'm a fairly safe driver. It's one of the good qualities I inherited from my father. I kept my cruise control right on 60 mph, stayed in the slow lane, and I'd successfully...
I would have prayed, but I had to merge.
This morning, as I made my way down the Trail of Tears to the town of Scooba, I passed a man in a reddish-shall-we-say-bleeding-into-burgundy Chevy Aveo...reading a book. While he drove. We were heading into that infamously, always congested section of highway right outside a town, or village, or tribe, known simply by the wooden staked sign, signaling both the start and the end of what appears to be a mostly dirt road, bearing the mysterious name of Wahalak. For some reason, and I feel that voodoo has a large part to do with it, they simply cannot get this portion of the road...
I was able to order my fish sandwich without incident.
I can no longer ignore the inevitable because Wednesday, June 24, is fast approaching. And that is the day in which I must board a plane. And fly to Memphis, in which, I will get off one plane and onto another one...and head to Tacoma. A city in a state so far away from here that it might as well not even be a part of the United States. Few other things make me as defensive or difficult as flying. Because I'm so afraid of it. Not just because I'm mean. Flying is something that I can safely hate. I become neurotic, distraught, maybe even mean...I'm...
That time I almost met Harper Lee.
I take great pride in the Lee last name. According to legend, and also my father who, among his many world travels, visited the "Lee place" in Ireland, etc. I think, from what I can gather, that it was hardly more than a couple of sticks stuck upright in a slab of mortar. I mean, that's been centuries back; the only palpable evidence was that of the family crest, but don't ask me what's on that thing. I couldn't tell you. What I do know is that there were only ever two Lee brothers who set out for the New World. Both...
The monk on a yellow motorcycle.
Again, with the dreams. I'm having such dreams, lately. A flood. Minus the ark. I think they're so vehement and vivid because I'm knuckles-down and knee-deep in rehearsals for The Complete Works of William Shakespeare [abridged]. We open next week, and I'm stressed, to be sure. But so long as I can get that stress out in my dreams, and not on the stage, perhaps, perchance, it will be all right. After all, the Bard said, There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Heaven help me indeed, if this is part of my philosophy. Earth, I...
The Times they are a-strangin'.
I took a road trip yesterday with Kim and Amanda. We drove down to the beach, an annual treat, and one of the few things I look forward to the whole year long. Sometimes, two of the few things I look forward to the whole year long, if I can manage to get away again. I'd never taken a trip with Kim and Amanda, at the same time; I've certainly spent time with them separately, and had a wonderful time with each, but I wasn't sure the casserole would take, so to speak, when all the ingredients were added. We all have...


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