Memories of Gibson's Discount Center Do you have any special memories of the song, Heartache by Bonnie Tyler? The year it was released, 1977, my family was living in West Texas, and I had just turned 10. The following summer of 1978, my folks were planning another...
Thanks to International Youth Service, I became pen pals with a girl from Germany in 1980. Let's Be Pen Pals: International Youth Service Did you have pen pals growing up? My old scrapbook is filled with Hallmark date books, cards, pictures, elementary school track...
Back in the 1970s and 80s, half of all Gen-Xers grew up in households headed by single moms. They didn't call us free-range kids back then, but I suppose that's exactly what we were. Latchkey kids that roamed the boulevards, back roads and byways of America. We dodged...
In these frozen and silent nights Sometimes in a dream you appear... Our hearts were singing It felt like Christmastime Two thousand miles Is very far through the snow I'll think of you Wherever you go --2,000 Miles, The Pretenders Ten years ago, I...
...Now we went walking in the rain talking about the pain from the world we hid Now there ain't nobody nowhere nohow gonna ever understand me the way you did... --Springsteen and Bobby Jean The best evidence I have these days that there is a God and He loves me came...
The Children's March For Survival, 1972 On March 25, 1972, 30,000 people, most of them African-American school children, gathered on the streets of Washington D.C. to protest welfare reforms. The protest was called the Children's March for Survival. The kids...
I was 10-years-old and life unfolded like laundry on a line. We were sheets baked in the wind, our dreams heavy like wet, pilling blankets pinned to a wire. I was pulled taut between two poles, my mother, my father. Fastened in 15 different places -- to shame and...
This past year, 2014, has been harder than most. My father died in February and things came undone. But, if it's possible, 2013 was even worse. What I've been through is probably exactly what you've been through in your life. The most personal stories are also the...
Here is an excerpt from a poem by Natalie Goldberg called I Want To Say. It's from Top of My Lungs, © The Overlook Press. Before I'm lost to time and the midwest I want to say I was here I loved the half light all winter I want you to know before I leave that I liked...
In order to write your memoir, you must first know how to remember. If you could have just one memory, what would it be? Here is mine. I am 29-years-old and six days from 30. I'm on my side in a hospital bed. I white-knuckle the rails and sweat like a pig. The nurse...
Growing up, I went to church three times a week, and even when I wasn't listening to my dad's sermons, some part of me was paying attention. My recall of things I didn't know I knew surprises me sometimes. Often, my father pounded the pulpit in fits of hell, fire, and...
In the spring of 1993, thousands of people of all ages held hands and formed a circle around Tinker Air Force Base. They gathered outside the fence wearing T-shirts that said SAVE TINKER and waved flags and held signs. In just a few days they would discover Tinker's...