The third in a series of occasional posts about tripping along U.S. Highway 395. Between Knight’s Ferry and Chinese Camp is 21 miles of rolling ranchland. Out here the land is split into parcels, each section defined by the brainchild of an Illinois farmer named Joseph Glidden. Glidden’s invention would forever put its stamp on …
“Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game.” ~Jacques Barzun Major League Baseball’s spring training is open for business. With all due disrespect to Punxsutawney Phil, that know it all buck toothed rodent, the news that pitchers are lobbing baseballs to catchers …
The second in a series of occasional posts about tripping along U.S. Highway 395. To explore Highway 395, you first have to get to 395. We’ll be picking up 395 at Sonora Junction, at the terminus of Highway 108, just east of a twisting descent from the Sonora Pass. We’re eastbound cutting across the width …
The boy turned 13. Thirteen begs a question. Is he still a boy? For a time, back when he was two or three, he would insist that he was a boy. Whenever Cora or I presented him with the proposition that he was a person he responded with a reasoning, “I’m not a person, I’m …
The first in a series of occasional posts about tripping along U.S. Highway 395. Highway 395. From the Canadian border to the Mojave Desert in California, it makes its way through thick green forests, flinty high desert country, and oceans of cheatgrass. It rolls past golden yellow wheat fields, blinding, bleached alkali lakes, the rugged, …
“Beg to report sir, the good ship California is taking on water and is listing to port.” *** “It’s raining, it’s pouring, The old man is snoring …” It’s been raining and pouring but this old man hasn’t been snoring. He’s a light sleeper, even lighter when anything that isn’t tied down is blowing around …
“Out with the old and in with the new,” goes the old New Year’s saying. The year 2022 decided that it would not go gracefully. I watched 2022’s final stormy afternoon from inside Peet’s Coffee at the local supermarket mall. The Bay Area was shooting the rapids, metaphorically speaking, of an atmospheric river. Atmospheric river. …
Cora posed the question sometime during Thanksgiving weekend. It was the never before posed query that put normalcy into doubt. “Are we getting a tree this year?” She might just as well have asked if we planned on breathing. I’d actually been asking myself the same question since the holiday season began, sometime back in …
A chapter in an occasional series of posts documenting an autumn 2021 road trip through the Midwest. A continuation of the post, Highway 52 – Southbound To ‘Heaven’ “The people who come here will be drawn…” He stops, searching for words. “Have you ever been walking down the street and stopped in mid-stride and turned …
A chapter in an occasional series of posts documenting an autumn 2021 road trip through the Midwest. A continuation of the post, “The Road to Lansing and the Divine Revelation” “I just feel like the most important conversations I’ve had in my life have been at a diner counter.” ~ Ramy Youssef October 23rd, Lansing, …
The Life in My Years 