Eb’s Spanish lessons

June 29, 2025

The waitress had just refilled my coffee cup when a familiar character slid into the opposite side of the coffee shop booth. It was my old buddy, Eb Griper. I’m not saying Eb has a sour personality but he can curdle a pitcher of cream just by staring at it. “Morning, Eb,” I offered. “Yep,” Eb said glumly. “Bad day?” “Is there any other kind?” “Boy,” I said, “you can make a Friday seem like a Monday. Why so glum?” “Hilda.” “And what did Hilda do to upset you today?” Eb sighed. “She decided I need more culture.” “And you believe ...

Memories go way back

June 22, 2025

While chatting with a high school classmate recently we discussed some childhood and school memories. He said he could remember back to his pre-kindergarten years and I said I can remember bits and pieces of when I was two years old. That’s nothing special but it is uncommon. Psychologists tell us that most people cannot remember beyond age three. Children’s memory abilities, it is understood, don’t fully mature until about age seven. They call this inability to recall memories from early childhood “infantile amnesia” and believe this is not due to a lack of memory ...

The toys of summer

June 15, 2025

Many of the toys kids play with nowadays had not been invented when I was a kid. In fact, today’s kids probably would not recognize many of the ways we entertained ourselves in the 1950s. As the days heat up I think back to the summers of my childhood. These memories often include the toys we played with back then. During the winter we played with Lincoln Logs, Tinker Toys and board games but in the outdoors of summer our toys were even more fun. Bicycles were essential in the summers of the 1950s. Most families had only one car and moms were not chauffeurs. You want to go ...

We are all going to die

June 10, 2025

This is for you, Doug. I will never forget the moment I told you I was going to take over the DFJ for two months. You rolled your eyes. That was back in the spring of 2022. This is for you, Loween, whose expressions I remember clearly when I presented at a Rotary meeting in the basement of the Second Street Emporium so very long ago. I recall I was introducing my play "Afternoon." I read from the dry research material I had gathered and, hoo boy, did your face tell a story. I think you would agree that dry is an understatement. But then I began to tell a greater story, that of ...

More in common than I thought

June 8, 2025

My father and I didn’t have a lot in common and that fact began to show up in our relationship when I was about 12 years old. The age labeled “pre-teen” is difficult for the pre-teen and his/her parent. In my case, it began a time of being many things my father wasn’t. Please don’t misunderstand; my father was a good, hard-working, God-fearing man. He worked hard, brought home his paycheck every week and loved our mother. What I was becoming, however, was something Dad wasn’t. Being the oldest of his six children, I came to realize those differences created some ...

Growing up fast

May 27, 2025

Several years ago the Des Moines Register published a photo of a young guy skating at a skateboard park in the metro. The cutline identified the young man as a 25-year-old. My first thought was, “When I was 25 I was so busy working I couldn’t have gone skateboarding even if I could skateboard.” Back in the 1960s some of us grew up quickly. By the time I was 22 I had a good (albeit low-paying) job, was married and my wife and I had purchased our first house. By the time I was 24, I was a father. From the time I was a late teen I ran with an older crowd. Most of my friends ...