It wasn’t a road as such, more a grass-choked two-track splitting off the cobbled dead-end street to rise onto what appeared to be a narrow levee separating the town from the railroad tracks. Beyond it an old unused grain elevator jutting into the view. “I wonder if it’ll take us there,” … More Downtown anytown
“How will we do this?” my wife asked. I looked out the window at the Cedar Point Mill and couldn’t help but imagine the entire structure crumbling into the river—with me inside. The cracks and seams spidering the limestone walls seemed wider and more pronounced than during my last visit two … More Time running out
Sometime in the night whether through a hard wind coming off the river, a minute shift in the mole-tunneled undersoil or the implacable pull of gravity, a small handhewn sliver of limestone that had been teetering nearly untethered for years beyond count wobbled free from the lower front wall and tumbled in a … More The house on the river
The cursor blinks with a cadence like an impatient tap of a foot. I’m waiting, it sneers. Would you speed it up a bit? I remind myself of the writer’s first rule: to bring order from chaos. Order. From. Chaos. It sounds so simple, so why … More Borderland vignettes
I saw my first roundabout several years ago when driving to the Topeka correctional facility to interview inmates who raise puppies for a local dog assistance program. First impressions linger longest, they say, certainly the case in point here. Rather than proceed blindly into the newfangled contraption, I pulled to the shoulder to … More Circular thinking
My granddaughter, Hailey, asked, “Do you have mountain lions there,” and I said, “Maybe. Why do you ask?” “You must live in the wilderness,” she said. Her voice was thin and reedy and filled with a curiosity that bordered on uncertainty if not fear, and on this evening she was filled … More Where the wild things are
I didn’t want to go out into the cold and ice and snow and so fretted over it with altogether too much energy. It was the last night of 2012 and I was tired. My wife had been working crazy long hours so we’d barely seen each other for several weeks, and … More The last picture, in three parts
How we appear to ourselves is rarely how others perceive us. This is doubly so when trying to infiltrate any form of gathering of “locals,” a weasely term that at once distances the bulk of attendees from a smaller fraction of those relegated to outsider status. Freelance writers and reporters are familiar … More Another form of witness
The process was as slow as it was detailed: select an image in Lightroom, transfer it to Photoshop, increase the canvas size one inch on each side, type the name of the person in the lower margin followed by the name or nature of his or her business, center the type, … More When you’ll know when
Before the opening last week of the new low-slung concrete bridge spanning the banks of the Big Blue River, residents worried that the old bridge would fall apart before its replacement could be built. Closing it was unthinkable—a detour would require a minimum of 45 miles one way on dirt and gravel … More The bridge over the River Blue
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