Dinner in the Field and other stories
I find you can discover your strengths at any age. For example, I find I’m a better writer than I am an editor. I have a full-length draft of a memoir that I’ve devoted countless hours to, and it’s finally finished. I’m anxious to move on to new material. But finishing the book is not the same as completing the project. Doing it right, I’m told, entails a less than...
Welcome June
In August we got a call on a Friday that Moe and Don wanted to come down and see us Sunday. Nice surprise. They had just been down on the 4th of July. We always take visits from them whenever we can get them, but they were rare during the pandemic. They were very careful about the virus and insisted we be careful as well. We were sitting outside in...
A Man Who is Cold
It’s funny how and when you remember lines from books. On Monday, I was in the kitchen of a homeless shelter where two of my friends and I were serving as volunteers. It was a bitterly cold day. As I drove toward the shelter in the dark the thermometer on the dial of the Buick read -2. There was a bad wind. We had served breakfast to the people in...
Food and Wood
I worked as a volunteer for the Obama campaign in 2007. The weekend before the election between he and John McCain I went to Easton, Iowa in Madison County, where the famous covered bridges are, and went door to door for a weekend passing out campaign material and engaging targeted voters. As I drove home, I had a feeling he would win. And when he did, I was relieved. I...
Learning Alone
A while back I posted a story to my blog about Polio that was especially well received. I judge that by the number of clicks, or times a post is opened. I am very grateful my pieces are being read at all. Some are read more than others, which is fine with me. I try to write what I feel rather than anticipating what you want to read. Some of...
Tumultuous Days in America
I’m on a run of missing important historical moments. On the second Monday of September 2001 the Bob Dylan CD I had pre-ordered, Love and Theft, came in the mail. I waited till the next morning after Dean and I had breakfast and he was out the door in time for school before I put it in the stereo. I cranked it up and played it twice. The third time...
Santa Survives the Pandemic
I saw him from across the park and thought it might be him. But it wasn’t until he slid onto the bench on the opposite side of the picnic table, at the other end, appropriately distanced and masked, that I knew for sure. His eyes gave him away. I’d given up on seeing Santa this year. “I thought it might be you. How did you find me?” “Come on McClure,...
Election Day 2020
I walked into the Lions Club on Porter Road about 5:30 a.m. on November 3. The street running between Post and Champlain Streets was renamed Bellvue Avenue, but it will always be Porter Road to me. My fellow election judges were still setting up. Two precincts stage elections at the Lions Club. Ottawa 12 and Ottawa 4. We share voting booths, a vote tabulator, and a secure WiFi connection to...
A Dinner Conversation Revisited
In the Spring of 2018, I took a solo road trip following the Civil Rights Trail through Alabama and blogged about it. I met a lot of people along the way and one couple thought they knew me. It got me an invitation to join them at their table for dinner at a great BBQ/Seafood shack near the Alabama Florida border. It had that Alabama ambience. Distinctive decor. I expanded...
Voting
I turned 21 in August of 1972 and voted in my first presidential election that November. I thought I was voting as part of a massive wave of young people opposed to the Vietnam War. I had high hopes that we would vote out President Richard Nixon, elected in 1968, for failing to fulfill his promise to bring that war to the end. For the first time in U.S. history...
Polio 1952
I typically write in the first person about events I experience firsthand. This story is not mine, though I was technically present, being born in 1951. I learned of it by interviewing my older siblings who were part of the story and painfully aware of these events which unfolded in 1952. It is a composite of their memories. I learned firsthand that three people remember more than one. What happened...