I spent a couple of days with my folks in Washington State, where I grew up.  It’s always good to go, and even more imperative as they age.  However, the part I seem to forget when I visit, is that time portal called their front door.  When I step through, the world suddenly changes, and I have traveled back in time.  The atmosphere inside, at the latest, is around 1970.  That’s the truth–you can ask any of my childhood friends.  Nixon unfortunately is still in the White House, and they still speak of John F. Kennedy with reverence.

Two of my brothers came over and we settled into the family room to answer questions on Jeopardy.  My dad has his evening viewing schedule locked up.  After Final Jeopardy, he flips over to MeTV for an old rerun of MASH.  It isn’t a very humorous episode.  Hawkeye and company are…

Helen seated below flag in stripped tank and blond hair-Monte Carlo 1932

Chum once told me that he never suffered from jet lag.  And he later flew jets.  The early flights didn’t reach ten thousand feet in altitude and the duration was relatively short.  Time zone hopping took a lot longer from the east to the west, and back again.  Flights landed before the body or even the mind was too zapped.  I asked him how he sustained himself waking up in a different place nearly every day.  He looked at me with a perplexed expression, as though he couldn’t fathom the question.  “I never had any problems,” he’d repeat.  “I never struggled to sleep, and my appetite was always good.”

Those few, still living when I began River of January told me, amused, that Chum made a habit of standing on his hands, heels against the hotel wall every…

This morning we jumped out of bed at o-stupid thirty for a book talk in town. It was for a Rotary Club’s weekly sunrise breakfast gathering. The meeting quickly came to order, beginning with the Pledge, a brief prayer and a Rotary song. Then the agenda moved quickly to business.

These people seem to pursue all sorts of public service endeavors: literacy programs, charity work, and supporting community health projects. It was quite impressive to think that these folks could have stayed in bed an hour longer, and not involve themselves in public service, but they choose otherwise to make a difference.

When my slot came up in the program, my husband pressed the power button on the projector, and the show kicked off with alacrity. You see, I love not only talking about the book, River of January, but the process behind the writing, as well. On this occasion…

Piecing this story together didn’t come easily.  Though I have had the benefit of volumes of letters, telegrams, and pictures, among other sources, I still have struggled to get the story right.  The picture posted today provides an example of the most exciting finds I’ve made, but still shrouded with some doubt.

The girl in the center, in front of the Waco airplane, is Francis Marsalis Harrell.  From Chum’s thick scrapbook and an interview I conducted with him, I know her to have been his girlfriend.  They dated for a about a year after he left the Navy, and I believe he cared deeply for this young lady.  What brought me to that conclusion was piecework and conjecture.  First, during my interview sessions with Chum he lightly mentioned that his girlfriend used to time his trips into Manhattan from Long Island, but only when he drove female flight students into…

I could hear a mouse under the bed. Crisp little maneuvers, poking around the books and pictures stored down there. Now, I am not afraid of mice, that’s more of a snake issue, but still, this little varmint rooting around wasn’t exactly relaxing.

I woke my husband, and he didn’t complain or resent my waking him so late. He doesn’t like home invasions any more than I do. Instead he hopped up and found a mouse trap on the porch, slapped peanut butter on the trip latch, then just as promptly hopped back into bed and fell asleep.

Now, sleep wasn’t so easy for this girl–conking out after such a creepy discovery. I rolled to my side listening as that little critter resumed his inventory of my stuff.  My stomach tensed some, waiting for the steel of death to suddenly snap. It might as well have been a grenade with…