I really had to pee. I was on a two-hour layover at Denver International Airport, but now after three beers my plane was finally boarding and I had to pee. Really. What’s worse, I knew the plane was full. I was stuck with a window seat, and there were thunderstorms rolling in; it was certain the pilot wouldn’t turn off the seat belt sign until somewhere over Kansas. By that time, I knew I would have peed myself. I had but one …Read the Rest
I was on this commuter flight out of Mexico when it happened. It was one of those little two engine propeller-jobs, the kind where they make the fat guys sit in back lest the plane be too nose heavy and you crash shortly after takeoff. Sometimes we flew so low I could count the arms on the cactus whizzing by below us. We were going from Hermosillo to Tucson. It usually took a little over one hour – it was …Read the Rest
Sometimes my feet itch. It’s because I have to wear shoes all day, at this thing called a job. It sucks. I’d rather be doing something else, but the Nordic Warrior Queen says I have to work, so off I go. I’ve tried everything to stop the itch – sprays, ointments, powders, new shoes, expensive liners – but nothing works. By the end of the day, my feet itch so bad I’m going crazy, and people look at me funny like …Read the Rest
I was cold last night. In fact, I haven’t been this cold since I slept on that block of ice called an Aerobed the last time I was in Minnesota. But the Nordic Warrior Queen was toasty warm. I’m glad for that, at least. If you take a look at the pictures up above, you’ll understand why. She’s the one with all the covers. They weren’t that way when we went to bed, I’m pretty sure of that. And according to her, …Read the Rest
Kip: Hello Robert, I understand you’re having a book published. Can you tell me a little about it? Robert: First, Kip, thanks for having me. The book is a supernatural thriller in the vein of Peter Straub and Dean Koontz about a young man whose parents have just been murdered. The police think the murderer has marked him as the next victim, so he travels away with his estranged grandmother and uncle to a small town to hide out. But …Read the Rest
The Nordic Warrior Queen makes fun of me because I always close the closet door before going to bed at night. And sometimes she catches me jumping that last two feet to the bed, lest cold hands reach out from underneath and grab my ankles. She blames my behavior on the books I read – Stephen King, Peter Straub, Richard Matheson to name a few. But maybe if she’d grown up in a dark and scary basement, living …Read the Rest
The last time we towed was a few years ago. The Nordic Warrior Queen and I had moved to Arizona some time before, and after renting for a while, finally decided we liked it here enough to stay and bought a new home on the other side of the subdivision. Kirby flew down from Minnesota to help – after all, who do you call but your brother when you need help moving? After several sweaty hours of backbreaking labor, we …Read the Rest
Life returned to normal for a while and Kirby managed to evade the law (hopefully Officer Anderson isn’t reading this). One day not long after, I was at work relating the story of the light pole and the Ice Cream Truck to my friend Red, whose real name was James Redding. Red sported a long orange-brown beard and a balding head he kept hidden with a dirty baseball cap. He looked like a castoff from ZZ-Top. I mentioned to him that …Read the Rest
The Nordic Warrior Queen and I had been married just a few short months. We were living in beautiful New Hope, in an apartment overlooking Highway 18. Back then, long before Highway 18 was renamed to Highway 169, Kirby was the proud owner of a baby blue 1965 Dodge Power-Wagon, affectionately known as the Ice Cream truck. Maybe you’ve heard of it. We called it the Ice Cream Truck because it was identical to one my Uncle Boyd once owned. …Read the Rest
Sometime last year I wrote a story called The Towing, which recounted much of my experience with crap cars and what I did when they broke down. It was a long story – so much so that the two or three people who read it complained that they’d fallen asleep. I don’t blame them – reading frequently puts me to sleep as well. But much of the story involved my brother, and since I’ve been thinking about him a lot …Read the Rest