As most of you know, I made my living as a community newspaper publisher for more than three decades, starting in 1982 in San Augustine, down in Deep East Texas. I had just turned 27. Running The Rambler for five years (I ended up buying it) provided a valuable hands-on education. One of my teachers was Ambassador Edward A. Clark, a San Augustine native who became a prominent Austin attorney and Lyndon B. Johnson’s “key man in Texas,” as biographer Robert Caro termed him. Clark was rewarded with an ambassadorship to Australia when Johnson ascended to the presidency after John F. Kennedy’s...
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Roughly 25 years ago, I came into possession of a cache of black walnut, thanks to a sharp-eyed reader who took note of a column announcing that I had taken up building furniture as the latest hobby. Golf no longer held its allure, though I lived on a golf course. I realized, after a decade of playing or practicing several times a week, that I was unlikely to get any better at that accursed game.
My handicap was a highly dubious 12, meaning on average I shot in the mid-80s, with help from foot wedges and a nimble scorecard pencil. I possessed no natural talent and was spending about 20 hours...
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I woke Saturday morning ready to seize the day, a mental list of what I planned to do at top of mind. My Beautiful Mystery Companion was still in Denton helping daughter Abbie and fiancé Brady get settled into their new home. I was also there for a few days, lugging boxes and bins down a couple flights of stairs as they transition from an apartment to an actual house in a neat neighborhood called Idiot’s Hill.
I did not notice a hill or any idiots in particular while there, but both might become more obvious on subsequent visits. Best I can tell from online sleuthing, Idiot’s Hill got its name...
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I first entered a library when I was 6 or 7, a short myopic Yankee kid hungry for books. The Allenstown (N.H.) Public Library, then and now, is housed in a modest, one-story brick building with a fireplace at each end and large windows on either side of the front porch. In the summer, day lilies fill its front yard, blooming riotously as flowers do in cold climes. The library could easily pass for someone’s home, except for the identifying sign in front.
The library was built in 1934 during the New Deal by the Public Works Administration at a cost of $13,000, in the Colonial Revival style....
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The day broke cool with a heavy dew, the temperature at least 10 degrees lower than it had been during the dog days. The forecast temperatures would not break 90 degrees. That passes for early autumn weather in East Texas, a period when summer can rudely return without notice. It was time to begin clearing fencerows and around Pancho’s Pond here at Three Geese Farm.
This is one of those projects that takes time to bubble to the top of the never empty to-do list. Mowing and bushhogging take precedent. The grass can get away from you if neglected. The whole dang place can turn back into the Pine...
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I have embarked on the latest long-form writing project, after doing research off and on since the COVID-19 pandemic confined us to our homes in 2020. Being housebound was the impetus, as well as discovering nearly all of the primary sources I needed to compile were now available online – something that was not the case when I first delved into this topic nearly 40 years ago.
As always, getting started is difficult. But it is necessary. I could continue to keep traveling down online rabbit holes, looking for more information. That is one way to put off the arduous work of actually organizing...
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09.01.2024 – The air is markedly cooler on this Sunday morning, the first day of September in a year that has flown by – as all years do at this season of my life. I wake up one morning and it is spring, roll over and it is summer, get up to fall knocking at the door, back in bed and it is winter.
At least, that is how it feels.
By cooler, I mean the temperature this morning was about 70 degrees as I headed out the door, a half dozen degrees below the lows recorded each morning during the dog days. The highs are still drifting into the 90s by mid-afternoon. Still, summer has been put on notice...
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FENWAY PARK — It always feels like a homecoming when we return to “America’s Most Beloved Ballpark,” as the illuminated sign over the first-base grandstand proclaims. I have been showing up here regularly since at least 1967, maybe longer. That year is my earliest memory of being at Fenway, at age 12, sitting with my dad, brother Scott and childhood friend Bruce Courtemanche in the right-field bleachers. It was the next-to-last game of the season, and improbably the Red Sox were in a pennant race. Even more improbably, we had tickets, purchased early in the season by my dad.
Now, 57 seasons...
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SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS — Every day is Halloween here in Witch City — as this town of 45,000 on the North Shore, about 25 miles northeast of Boston, proudly proclaims itself at practically every commercial corner of town. The Witch City Mall is located downtown. The local high school athletic teams are named the Witches. Folks dressed as witches, both young and grown up, wandered the city’s streets, which are filled with shops banking on the theme. There is Witch City Wicks, a candle shop; Witch Tee’s, selling T-shirts; HausWitch Home + Healing; Blackcraft Salem; and Wicked Good Books, to name...
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BOSTON — I wish I could have been friends with Isabella Stewart Gardner. My Beautiful Mystery Companion and I are standing before a full-length portrait of her, painted in 1888 by John Singer Sargent and now ensconced in the Gothic Room of the museum that bears her name. The painting, which shows considerably less cleavage than the average teenage girl wandering any mall in America, at the time caused quite a scandal — prompting Isabella’s husband, Jack, to ask her to refrain from showing it in public. She respected his wishes. The painting remained visible by invitation only until her death...
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