One of my clearest, actually, one of my fondest childhood memories was of riding the gut sledge to the dump a mile or so from the 71...

The winter of 1946, Dad was managing a small outfit on the southwest flank of the Ruby Mountains, five miles from the hamlet of Lee,...

​I won. I think my mother gave up because she was tired of the routine, dragging a truculent, dusty twelve-year-old to a piano lesson....

Another Tuscarora Tale I wrote this piece in Tuscarora on Memorial Day 2013. Lilac bushes withstand winters here, but not every spring. Hard frosts leave the buds black as burnt match heads. In a bad year, only half the bushes bear a few blossoms. In a good year, the town is softened by a lilac haze and the sight of this place I love—an assemblage of mobile homes; abandoned shacks and wrecked cars; a few stick houses; a post office and a historic cemetery—makes me b

Over the loudspeaker, “Christmas party radiology conference room at noon.” We chipped in for cold cuts, brought goodies-- deviled eggs,...

Sobrina mia, this woman, the activity director, she’s a crazy lady. Last Christmas she gave guns to the old men and baby dolls to the...

A few night’s ago, I watched a re-run of Titanic. The scene where Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio steam up a roadster did nothing...

From 1942-1947 Dad managed a small cattle outfit in the western foothills of the Ruby Mountains near Lee, Nevada. It was his first job as...

In the fall of 1956, my friend Karen Toothman and I met Ernest Hemingway at the bar of the Stockman’s Hotel in Elko, Nevada. My friend’s father, Dick Toothman, managed the casino-hotel. Hemingway was on his way to his home in Ketchum, Idaho. High school freshmen, Karen and I were doing homework in her basement when the phone rang. Her mother called down the stairs, “Karen, your father says Ernest Hemingway is at the bar. If you girls want to meet him, come down right awa

January 4, 2024. A few days ago I slightly revised a piece I wrote over twenty years ago. My mother died in 2013. Much more has changed,...