Tom T. Hall, (b. 1936), died tonight. I loved listening to an 8-track of his songs that my older brother Billy (b. 1962) sent me for my 12th or 13th birthday. He was stationed in Okinawa at the time and I had never received a more magnificent gift. It came with an 8-track tape player […]
KISS Concert T-shirt and A Metal Lunch Box (Daily Photo)
Back in the 1900s, ? we carried metal lunch boxes to school that featured our favorite cartoon characters. We also wore KISS concert T-shirts neatly tucked into our jeans. ? We liked to look clean-cut while we listened to bands that spit blood ?, played flaming ? guitars, and occasionally levitated. Who can blame the […]
1980s Sunday School Pictures
Three Graces
I don’t remember the day my mother left my father and siblings and the sea-green stucco house on Sigman Street. I don’t remember the fight that drove her to leave. There were so many fights every day, all day long. I don’t remember arriving at my grandparents’ trailer in Downey, a city in Southeast […]
Remembering Puddingstone and Huntington Beach
The Elliotts, 1968 I hope life, treats you kind And I hope that you have all That you ever dreamed of… (Dolly Parton, I Will Always Love You, 1973) The experiences that form my early childhood memories are like a collection of 35mm slides stored in the carousel of my mind. Through the whirring of […]
Jennifer Sey: Remembering the 1988 Olympic Gold Medal Hopeful
Jennifer Sey, Goodwill Games, 1984 The elite and highly-decorated American gymnast, Jennifer Sey, was born in 1969. She won the 1986 National Gymnastics Championship and was considered the U.S. hopeful for gold in the 1988 Olympics, Seoul. Despite talent and years of training, she retired before those games even began. Later, she wrote a controversial […]
Adventures with Cousins on Bikes with Vinyl Flowered Baskets, 1980
“We need a place just for us. It would be so secret that we would never tell anyone in the whole world about it.” –From the Bridge to Terabithia, 1977. My cousins are posing with their bicycles in this photo from 1980. The original, which was taken by my father in East Texas, is out […]