“Yethir, yethir!” shouted Alvin. “This here is a good spread you have here, Jean. You have done yourthelf proud, ain’t she Clarenth?”...

Momma and Daddy took up fishing for a time. It seemed an enjoyable activity, and being thrifty people, they liked their recreation to...

I stood in the back seat leaning over the front, too excited to sit even if there was room. We were going to the Christmas program in the...

Alice O'Malley was the first woman I ever saw who smoked cigarettes and wore combat boots. She chugged into our neighborhood one cold day...

Cold! The kind of heart stopping cold that makes you cough as you take in freezing air, the kind you bundle against until your joints are...

A seminal event, the dictionary says, is one, after which nothing remains the same. Mine occurred one Saturday morning in November of...

What is unusual about the lilac? It is merely a flowering bush that grows in the midwest and blooms every May without any nurturing. It...

My Dad was a farmer in overalls. His hands were clown-large and always stained with petroleum oils and grease that it took to keep his...

Very occasionally, I was allowed to go to the broadcast of one of KMA’s shows. This was a radio station in Shenandoah. The company had a...

I was approximately 10 when I started to go to the dentist for braces. Dr. Fixit was a handsome young dentist who was doing “trial”...

It was only a 10 x 12 foot square, 7 rickety stairs leading down from the back yard sidewalk. The cave. It consisted of a sloped door...

My sister and I walked to the one room school when we were little girls. We wore feed-sack dresses. It took at least two matching sacks....

Momma was starting a beauty routine that she read about in a magazine. I hurried to pull up my step stool to the washstand to watch. She...

I was eleven. My sister and I had just finished an early morning chore with Dad at the “east place.” We were ready to go home. Our house...