Mary Frances was a poor girl from El Paso, who lived in a shack with her brother and their parents. Her father was a carpenter, who occasionally shot and brought home jackrabbits for their supper, and her mother took in laundry for extra income.
Toward the end of the Great Depression, the family moved from Texas to California. Mary Frances was seven at the time. A bit tomboyish, she preferred dungarees to dresses. As she entered her teen years, she admittedly had no money, no taste, and no...
Do you remember the comedic genius of Nathan Birnbaum and Mendel Berlinger? Or the graceful movements of Frederick Austerlitz and Virginia McMath? How about the cinematic offerings of Lucille LeSeuer, Issur Demsky, Frances Gumm, and Bernard Schwartz?
No? What about (in order) George Burns, Milton Berle, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Joan Crawford, Kirk Douglas, Judy Garland, and Tony Curtis? I get that only those of a certain age who are reading this may recognize these stage names, but to my...
Once upon a time, I got my skull cracked.
It was not an accident or an attack but a premeditated skull-cracking that I assented to with foreknowledge.
Someone recently asked me how long it had been since said skull-cracking. “Around seven years?” she asked. “At least seven years,” I responded. Later that evening, I dug into my archives to pinpoint the timeframe and was shocked to discover it was FIFTEEN years ago this month.
In January 2011, I was the proud recipient of a craniotomy. The...
Over a period of decades in the 1800s, branches of my family moved nearly a thousand miles from the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina to Nacogdoches, Texas. One of the first to make the trek was my 4x great-granduncle, Jacob Mast, who arrived there in 1828. Shortly after, he took a wife and started a family, his third child being Milton “Milt” Mast.
Milt was a farmer, waggoner, Confederate captain, retail merchant, and postmaster, eventually being elected as the sheriff and tax collector...
The typically carefree boy had recently become less so. Worries, some of them irrational, had gradually crept into his mind. He became preoccupied with thoughts about war and dying, and he was concerned by the possibility of getting sick while away from home. He worried about his life and the future.
These disturbances carried into the nighttime, and even his sleep had become troubled. One night, after some tossing and turning, he got out of his bed and went to his mother in the family’s den,...
Okay folks, here’s another gem from the Christmas vault a la late 60s. Here you see three American children in front of their bedecked tree, but me thinks there is more to the story. First, I (the child in the middle) apparently failed to receive the cowboy attire memo. That aside, judging by my wild-eyed expression, I may be a little inebriated. I’m pretty sure I was on the bottle till I was about five, so I could very well be high on Sealtest, or perhaps, in order to induce nap time, my...
This photo of my sister and me with “Santa Claus” always evokes an odd mix of both horror and amusement. At the time of the event – maybe circa 1969 – we were terrified by this masked stranger who entered our home and took us upon his knees. Okay, maybe horror and terror go a bit too far. As I scrutinize the image, I think my wide eyes and my finger in my mouth definitely portray some sense of “What in the figgy pudding is going on here?” My expressionless sister, on the other hand, seems...
In the midst of the Great Depression and World War II, a boy named Herff, from Spur, Texas, was brought up in a very religious home, due, in part, to the influence of his Presbyterian minister father. Hoping to become a pastor himself, Herff earned an undergraduate degree in philosophy with an eye toward seminary. In the interim, he met and married Ann, a fellow Texan who had graduated from a Christian women’s college in North Carolina. Later, in the midst of his theological studies, Herff...
In May 1953, a tall and very thin man with graying hair walked into the Calhoun, Georgia jail, asking for a place to sleep. His request was granted, but he was found dead the following morning, the victim of a cerebral hemorrhage.
Apparently, no one had asked the man’s name, and as authorities began to investigate his identity, they learned that he had told a waitress he had a wife in Maryville, Tennessee. This somehow led them to Ova Shore, who, when shown a picture of the deceased man,...
My paternal grandfather, Iris Harmon, had a great sense of humor and was a natural storyteller. Around 1971, most likely for the benefit of his three grandchildren (my brother, my sister, and me), he assumed the identity of a young, wet-behind-the-ears Santa Claus, eager to make his mark on the world and recorded the tale of his debut sleigh run and how he came to have white hair and a white beard. I hope you enjoy it!
“If you’ll get you a seat and be right quiet, I’ll tell you about the first...
This week, as I have watched the new Ken Burns documentary on the American Revolution, I’ve been reminded what a complicated time that was, and probably no more so than for those who refused to embrace the fight for independence – those who preferred the status quo and maintained their loyalty to the King of England. Although I have a few other Loyalist relatives, one in particular – a 6x great-grandfather, to be precise – has been on my mind, and this is his story.
John Eagles resided at...
Yes, you read that correctly. Daniel Boone and South Sudan’s independence.
“But wait,” you say. “Boone, that great American, who helped blaze a trail to what would become Kentucky, died in 1820, and South Sudan did not gain its independence until 2011. And to my knowledge, Boone never left his continent and certainly never traveled to Africa. What the heck are you talking about?”
Well, your facts are accurate, and perhaps I should clarify (read: admit) that Daniel Boone did not personally have...
This morning, on the outskirts of our local farmer’s market, I met a lovely, elderly lady, tall and slender, with short, stylish, salt and pepper hair. Dressed in what appeared to be comfortable lounge wear, she sat her handbag down in order to zip up her long, “puffer” overcoat against the cool October breeze.
I started our conversation with, “That’s a nice coat,” followed by asking if she was having a good day. Her daughter had dropped her off at the entrance to the farmer’s market while...
In the spring of 1891, an elderly patient was brought into Boston’s city hospital. Seemingly dressed in everything he owned – four shirts, three pairs of pants, two overcoats – and accompanied by his dog Pete, the man was a curious sight. He suffered from a bad heart and bad kidneys, and when he died, faithful Pete had to be dragged from his side. The old man was buried in a pauper’s grave.
His beginning was as regrettable as his ending. Born into slavery around 1815 in Caswell County, North...
Remember that popular Dos Equis marketing campaign with the debonair, silver haired and bearded gentlemen that proclaimed him to be the most interesting man in the world? The slogan soon became part of our cultural fabric and generated numerous parodies and memes. Well, that fellow aside, I think I may actually know the most interesting man in the world.
I first became aware of Kenney Isaacs in the early 1990s. I didn’t know him personally, but his adoptive father and my father were second...
In 1989, I made my first visit to Willow Valley Baptist Church, where a Wednesday night Bible study was being led by the pastor, Reverend Ray Greene, more commonly and affectionately known as “Preacher Ray.” The way in which he mined the scriptures and brought forth gems of insight took me to a new level of biblical understanding that, along with the wonderful church family there, led me to join their congregation within the following year.
As I got to know Preacher Ray better, I would learn...
August Schroeder was dead.
His widow, Dora, had found the prosperous forty-one-year-old farmer hanging in their barn on a summer morning in 1900 in rural Iowa. He left no note, but all Dora could figure was suicide.
The pair had married a decade earlier. August, a German immigrant, was more than a dozen years older than Dora. They had three children – two boys and a girl – ages 9, 7, and 5 at the time of their father’s death.
After discovering her husband's suspended body, Dora cut it down and...
As young bachelors in 1840, my great-grandfather’s great uncles, Nineveh and Ephraim Ford, left their native Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina for Missouri, but this would prove to be a temporary stopover as their attention was next drawn to Oregon.
Nineveh’s appetite had been whetted by the scenic descriptions within Lewis and Clark’s account of their great expedition some forty years earlier, and his intention to venture further westward was cemented by information he gleaned from...
As children, my mother and her siblings were not allowed to have bicycles. Their father forbade it – not as a form of harsh parenting that denied simple enjoyment, but, in his estimation, as a means to lovingly safeguard their wellbeing. His decision was rooted in what had happened to their cousin, Gordon Spainhour, Jr., who died almost a full year before my mother’s birth.
In the fall of 1938, as a freshman at North Carolina State University, seventeen-year-old Gordon and a friend were...
It’s almost been a year since the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Helene, and this fall will mark the 26th anniversary of Hurricane Hugo, which also resulted in extensive flooding and power outages. That day, September 22, 1989, was also the day I chose to get a haircut.
Don’t ask me why. There was no rhyme or reason to that decision, and I have no sensible answer. It was a Friday, and I was out of work for obvious reasons, so maybe since I had some free time on my hands, it seemed like a...