The gray-haired man in the hospital bed looked more dead than alive but I discerned a slight twinkle in his eye as he studied the photo I’d given him. It was him in a better day, and not long past, when he stood in a faux-saloon in a little town in northeastern Kansas … More Remember this
Lori said, someday this house isn’t going to work for us, and I said, you’re right. In my mind I saw us as senile and white-haired, bent and frail and leaning on solid oaken canes, faces like dried prunes. What are we going to do about that? she asked. … More This old house
Above all, keep your spirits up, I told myself. Look on the bright side. Okay, then, here’s a bright spot in an otherwise bleak day: It had taken a ridiculously long time to position myself on the edge of the examination table, and nobody was there to witness it. Nor had … More Day after day after day
When my father told me he’d had a nasty bout of shingles, that it was the most excruciating pain he’d ever experienced, I had no idea what he was talking about. The word brought to mind roofing tiles, or, as I sometimes see in deep woods on hot muggy mornings, bright orange clusters … More World of hurt
Few things in life are more tedious than having to listen to converts gush about their conversion experiences, whether religious, ideological, psychological or political. No matter how extreme, egregious or mundane the former sin (or lapse, as it were), the particulars all hew to the same pattern: I was lost, and then I … More Cast iron convert
What Lilah said, the way she said it, the way she pushed her hands outward as if trying to slow some oncoming force or releasing a bird or a thought or a wish, something ephemeral and flighty, the way her blue eyes bored into mine. The way she bent over the … More The killing grounds
We were exhausted the following morning having arrived home filthy and mud-crusted around 1:30 a.m. My brother Reece, never an early riser, nevertheless showed up on our doorstep at a reasonably early hour for our return trip to the Ojito Wilderness. Though there were two opposing theories about the timing of our return—later … More Return to Ojito
From what I can tell from a reconstructed second-hand conversation made days later, about the time my brother Reece and I coasted to a stop on a mudslick road west of San Ysidro, New Mexico, to inspect what appeared to be a sodden hay bale blocking our route, my wife asked my parents … More Escape from Ojito
For years, for decades, we carried the box of photographs from old home to new, adding to it now and then but for the most part simply finding space for it wherever we landed. The box contained—or so I thought—a photographic record of our life together, or at least the portions when I shot negative … More Worthless treasure
Afterwards, when downtown Frankfort began to thin out and the crush of vehicles both old and new began their long journeys back to their various starting points along Highway 9, KTWU Sunflower Journeys producer Bill Shaffer turned his video camera on me and asked when we were going to do another car run. … More At the end of the road
dispatchesfromkansas 