memoir

  • Alone at Eve

    John F. Kennedy, C.S. Lewis and Grace Walker Taylor all died on November 22nd. Just hours after my grandmother Grace passed on that date in 1993, my niece, Ashley Grace Taylor was born early on a Sunday morning. Her birth helped fill our sense of loss, Grace taken and Grace given. Ashley Grace Taylor Grandma…

    Read more →

  • As John Welch’s arm exploded through the safety glass just above the brass push bar he realized the race had been won and the battle lost. Our third and fourth grade classes routinely made the sixty yard sprint across the playground from the north wing to the south wing of Limestone School rewarding the win,…

    Read more →

  • I grew up alongside Kevin Arnold of the Wonder Years only without a Jets letter jacket. Those neighborhood landmarks and watershed moments and the guys I ran with, through the streets and adjacent woods just a couple blocks north of Limestone School, are etched in the granite of my adolescent memory. So this section is…

    Read more →

  • Brach’s hard candy slid across the gleaming tile floors of the main hall at Limestone school like tiny hockey pucks propelled by the hand of Rusty the janitor who kept the cinnamon, butterscotch and peppermint treats in a coffee can in his supply closet. The pine scent floor polish and a strict discipline of machine…

    Read more →

  • Gushing Well Water

    During my final two years at Harding University, I lived in a dilapidated house with eight guys on the edge of campus in Searcy, Arkansas. Rector House stood on North Grand Street and has since been demolished, but in the spring of 1981, it still stood…barely…just months from institutional progress in the form of a…

    Read more →