I want to tell you about a typical summer day for a 10-year-old boy in a suburb of Dickerson Run named East Liberty, Pennsylvania. But first, some geographic clarification. The East Liberty where I grew up, or just 鈥淟iberty,鈥� as we locals called it, is not a part of Pittsburgh. It is a ...
Like many of you, I have spent large chunks of life chasing shiny things. In that regard, I have been distracted by a desire to appear successful by having the trappings of 鈥渟uccess.鈥� You know, the things that say, 鈥淚 made it. Applause, please.鈥� It started when I was a tween. ...
They built a golf course all around my grandparents' house. The 18th fairway nearly cut through their backyard, and until we put wire grates over the windows, flying glass and golf balls were a common threat. Dad attempted to play golf a few times. As a little kid, he had fallen off a horse. ...
As a teacher, husband, and new father in the 鈥�70s, expectations of what it meant to be a man changed. I can remember telling a friend, 鈥淚 grew up idolizing John Wayne and had to become Alan Alda.鈥� For my younger readers, it meant that men raised to admire the strong, silent, macho type ...
Oh, yeah, Easter in the 1950s. A time when the Easter Bunny wasn鈥檛 either a capitalistic corporate mascot or CGI nightmare, but a slightly disquieting, floppy-eared creature you might encounter in a department store, smelling a little like second-hand cigarette smoke. For kids like me, ...
One cloudy and rainy morning, just after the freakin鈥� time change (because nothing says 鈥渢yranny鈥� like the government taking an hour of sleep away from us), I awoke from a dream so vivid that I believed I was a time traveler. In the dream, I was running down the street, trying to warn my ...
