Category Archives: Who Kicked

One More Time

One More Time

The guys at work called him Sparky. He proclaimed with some vehemence a motto of safety first, but always said it with a grin. That’s when the lights went out, a blown circuit breaker or unexpected surge of current the cause. Still though, he could repair the tail lights on your pickup truck with a foil wrapper from a stick of chewing gum, or jury rig a machine tool such to make the Hardinge Brothers roll in their steely graves. Five different times we …Read the Rest

Chip

Chip

I like to think that most of us, while growing up, meet a few people who touch our lives in some small way, who help to repair—at least a little bit—the fraying tapestry of our troubled youths.  Chip Proshek was one of these. I first knew him as Dr. Proshek. He was an orthopedic surgeon, and while I was still struggling with the many challenges of training-wheels, he was performing surgery on my mother’s back. With today’s medicine, that same …Read the Rest

Mike Wallace and the Pearly Gates

Mike Wallace and the Pearly Gates

When Mike Wallace got to the Pearly Gates, he found Saint Peter standing out front waiting for him. At the look of confusion on Wallace’s face, Saint Peter reached out a welcoming hand. “It’s okay, Mr. Wallace. You can rest now.” “No, wait,” Wallace looked around anxiously. “Where, uh…am I dead?” Saint Peter simply smiled in response. “Oh. Well, I see. I sort of figured that, you know. That last chest pain was a real motherfucker…oh, sorry.” Wallace seemed embarrassed …Read the Rest

At the Farm

At the Farm

To escape the photographs hanging unstraightened in the hall, the silent bedroom with its row of dusty clothes hanging behind the closet door so firmly shut, his broken wife weeping in the kitchen and the simple reproach of the empty place setting at the dinner table, my father would sometimes take me to his brother’s big ranch house in the country, with its painted shutters, its neat flowerbeds, its clanging horseshoes and brave flagpole and the six dogs who would run …Read the Rest

The Rattlesnake

The Rattlesnake

To be honest, the first time I met our new neighbors, I thought they were a real pain in the ass. After all, I had the house to myself: drinking a few beers and enjoying the remake of The Night Stalker. I had the volume turned way up, and was reminiscing about the original TV series with Gavin McLeod—as a kid, it scared the crap out me. And then the thing with the snake happened. The Nordic Warrior Queen was …Read the Rest

Oozing All Over

Oozing All Over

According to Wiki, the flu kills 250,000-500,000 people annually. The Centers for Disease Control says that, in the United States alone, over 40,000 die each year from the flu. And once every 20-30 years, a particularly nasty strain of influenza pops up and proceeds to wipe out a couple million of us before epidemiologists can get it under control. Scary. Less than 100 years ago, the mother of all flu pandemics – the Spanish Flu – claimed somewhere between 50-100 …Read the Rest

Making Parts

Making Parts

I bought this ‘67 Chevelle once. It had a 327 small block, a Muncie 4-speed and 4.11 Posi-Trac rear-end. It wasn’t an SS, but I knew I could fix it up just as nice. This was the same car my brother and I would one day tow down County Road 5, nearly killing a woman and her small children when the front tire came loose and ricocheted in front of their minivan. But that was years later. I was eighteen. …Read the Rest

The Meaning of Thanksgiving

The Meaning of Thanksgiving

This afternoon I was going through some old emails and ran across this message from my brother, sent last year on Thanksgiving day. It’s the last email I received from him. I never replied. He died three months later. The meaning of Thanksgiving……as I see it these days. I’ve found more feeling about this celebration day. Trying to dig a little deeper into how I see my life lately has made me realize how lucky I am. I have friends …Read the Rest

Giving Thanks

Young Tom watched in fear as his brothers, uncles, and finally his father were taken away by the big man in the blood-soaked coat. None of them had said a word; had only stared wide-eyed each time the door was opened and one after another of them were pulled out. Tom had urged them to fight, had tried to convince the group that together they could rush the man, knock him down and somehow escape the camp. But Tom’s father …Read the Rest

The Lost Matador

The Lost Matador

The Nordic Warrior Queen and I had been dating just a few months when we faced the first true test of our relationship. I was sixteen and in desperate need of a car, having abandoned my Corvair at the local junkyard some weeks before. Ben Theis, a friend of mine at the machine shop where I was working, told me his Dad had a ‘71 AMC Matador for sale, so that Friday after work Benny gave me a lift to …Read the Rest

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