From the age of 6 to 11, my adolescent after-school care-taking was done by Mildred, an older woman with a reasonably large family right around the block from our house. We met as a result of my befriending her son, Glenn, and after my mother met Mildred, they worked out a financial agreement where...
Read more »
It’s odd that on this particular Father’s Day, after feeling the short-shrift the majority of my life, I’m strangely released from the sadness of my paternal upbringing (if you can even call it that). Maybe I’ve just hashed the living prose out of it so much that I’ve set free some of those demons...
Read more »
By the fourth grade I should have known better. I should have known that I was going to take my lumps for hanging onto Santa Claus the way I did but, damn, I’m nothing if not dogged in my point of view and that pretty much brings up another associated problem at the time....
Read more »
When I was growing up in the ’50′s and ’60′s, environmental concerns weren’t on the average person’s radar and, in fact, Rachel Carlson’s ground breaking 1962 book, Silent Spring, was the only serious look at pollution and was primarily concerned with the use of poisonous chemicals, dispersed in the ground water supply. So, when...
Read more »
When I was at the peak of my ‘Trick or Treat’ powers, primarily the grade school years, neighborhoods far and wide opened up like candy dispensaries. It wasn’t just a particular street or area that opened up its doors but every street and nearly every door. As long as you could keep walking was...
Read more »
My step-dad (father #3 if you’re counting) has been in my life since 1972 and when I dare to count the years, which I often don’t, it adds up to a majority of my adult life. On Sunday morning, May 24th, 2009, he passed away due to cancerous complications. From the moment I met...
Read more »
I don’t think I ever quite got the worth of Kindergarten. Back in 1956, pre-school hadn’t been created and kindergarten was the launching pad for your school years. Most of the kids in my class were discovering the wonders of their newfound social circle, while others were simply enthralled with their own boogers or...
Read more »
My dad (father #2) loved the grandiosity of staged illusion and made it a major part of his performing repertoire. When he spoke of the history of magic and magicians it was with great reverence for the craft and he worked hard to hone his own skills so that they were a worthy contribution...
Read more »
I’m not sure at what point it became clear to my mother that my biological father (father #1) was not going to make good family material but a clear indicator might have been the occasion of my birth. As my mother tells it, he was around briefly for the actual birth but sort of...
Read more »
Barb moved in about a block and a half from our house when I was 16 and, because she was new to the neighborhood, slowly and shyly melded into our group of pals that included several other houses on our block. We mostly hung out around my house because I had a yard big...
Read more »
