I can’t say how many places lay claim to being “America’s Switzerland.” Like, while driving through Missouri, how many of Jesse James’ “famous hideouts” do you pass? Mosey up Chesapeake Bay and you’ll see plenty of signs proclaiming, “George Washington slept here.” Head toward the Trinity Alps and you’ll see lots of tributes to Big [...]

When I was a little boy I heard on the radio an Okie ballad I’ll never forget. It was about a no-count hobo who used a dog-eared deck of cards to preach Gospel. A highfalutin sort of numerology, the lyrics were, with Biblical significance attached to 4, 13, 52 and 1 through 10. Add the [...]

Even before his Arkansas razorback hog started helping, Lew had always gotten a big kick out of plucking tree stumps. Just cuzz there weren’t any easy way of doing it didn’t mean it couldn’t be fun once you got the knack. Then if a dirt farmer couldn’t kick a shovel, or swing a maddox and [...]

Fellahs like Lew didn’t used to be so scarce in these hills. You go back a lifetime and they were as common as Ki-oats. Back there in the old world ruled by Kings and Queens, constables, taxmen and armies, fellahs like Lew were called “yeomen.” Among other things, that meant they were so poor and [...]

“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
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An Irishman out the depression era slums of Chicago, my dad was a very hard man. “Hard but fair,” as they said in those days. Born with a steel jaw, an open mind, the gift of gab, a hankering for fun and a powerful sense of propriety, my dad was cool the way Frank Sinatra [...]

All us humans need something to distinguish ourselves from the dirt. Don’t matter what it is: a human will take pride in anything. If one fellah takes pride in having traveled the world round, the next will take just as much in never having laid eyes on anything beyond what he can see from his [...]

The York Boulevard Bridge was built like one of the Pershing tanks parked in the National Guard Armory staked-out at its foot. Since nature had blessed the LA Basin with plenty of rocks, sand and gravel, concrete was dirt cheap. So why not build a pudgy hulk of a concrete bridge across the Arroyo Seco’s [...]

Laying eyes for the first time on the Olsen boys, you’d never guess they were brothers, much less twins. They were un-identical twins, obviously, in the way that raccoons and skunks, having identical body parts, are un-identical. Ollie, who was older than Hedrick by a hair, was long, lean and shambling. When Ollie was walking [...]

Our bedroom windows faced each other across our slice of side yard and Michael and me had snuck out at night plenty of times. But, before tonight, we’d always stuck close to home. Our little canyon ended at the foot of Poppy Peak and we usually went and hung out up there. Poppy Peak was [...]