Memory

  I have a sudden and unexplainable urge to walk out the door, and into a blizzard.   that scent..... that sound..... It was a memory of Penfold and Maggie that stirred it, that dirt road intersection of zero significance, before the war on terror.   Why was I even there, that...

Ramona Hotel, circa 1908 This is a photo of the hotel in it's infancy. Eventually two annexes would be added to it's rear, one in 1940, and one in 1956, which if combined would be a good deal larger than the original building shown here. Condemned as a fire hazard in 1981, and finally torn…

  So I probably laughed for a good minute straight at the sight of my friend trying to paddle in the canoe. It's not that he looked ridiculous or anything, well, I take that back...but the ridiculousness was much less attributed to him and the canoe, and more to the place in which the canoe&...

    I grew up in the sleepy cracked-cement downtown blocks of the city, but my grandparents lived a good five miles north of town, out in the rolling hills of the sparsely populated countryside. Their driveway consisted first of a long paved dead-end road that hooked off of the main roa...

  I had my first (kind of) real, (sort of) girlfriend, at summer camp when I was thirteen. By that time, I had been well aware of women, as adults are aware of women, for perhaps a year or more (otherwise known as an eternity, at that age). Still, I had yet to even touch…

  The fifty cents I spent on a newspaper to keep me company over breakfast this morning was a complete waste...not that I minded. As I walked into the diner, paper and wallet in hand, I noticed an array of familiar faces scattered around, and suspected that I would most likely not get a chan...

After a very prolonged delay, the pair of pants finally died. They went to their demise with nearly half a spool of hand-stitched thread, compliments of yours truly, three iron on patches, and several missing yards of the original thread that used to be around the heel. The center button was also...

  That's right, ladies and gentleman...its time to uncork the bud-light, turn up the Toby Keith, and blow shit up. The all-American holiday is back! uhh! Yeah! In your FACE commies! It is, without a doubt, every American's favorite holiday...because if there's one thing we enjoy celebrating ...

  Jesus Christ Almighty.   First of all, before I devolve into my bitter and resentful tirade about the bottom wrungs of society, let me first explain how out of character such condescending talk is for me. I have always had a particular fondness for simple people. Those who, like child...

What an astounding and invigorating summer...the likes of which I haven't seen in a decade. I'm never shy to complain about the unseen and arguably non-existent collective air that society tends to generate, but if I may atone for my bitterness, I'd like to acknowledge that the fear and tension a...