Following a six-month assignment at the Marine Division in Annapolis, Maryland I returned home. The day after my return Mardelle and I were still sitting at the table in conversation when I heard her say something about a lawyer.

“Beg pardon?” I queried.

“I said that I had engaged a lawyer to handle the divorce.”

“What divorce is that?”

“Ours,” she said, “I don’t want to be married any more.”

This bit of information came to me as a bolt out of the blu...(click to continue reading)

After ten years in our new house it wasn’t new any more. We had shrubs and flowers about, and a tree grew in the front yard. I had finished a room in the attic for two growing boys and one room remained unfinished. Since the boys occupied the upstairs room it seemed reasonable to provide them a bathroom near their sleeping quarters and so I had a dormer added to the back of the house with toilet and bath facilities installed. I thought the house was adequate for our family of six, but the childr...(click to continue reading)

Being a local girl, my bride Mary had a circle of friends with whom she had grown up. On the other hand, I was new in town and most of my friends were guys I knew at work. Most of her friends were busy getting married and although we got together with some of them sometimes, we never became close friends with any of them. Co-workers of my age were mainly from somewhere else and prone to get together socially. And so it was that most of our friends came from the ranks of engineers and their wives...(click to continue reading)

“Now that we’re in South Dakota we ought to stop in Mitchell and see the Corn Palace,” I said as we drove along in our Volkswagen minibus en route home from a month’s tour of the western parks of the USA. The minibus was loaded with camp gear that left just enough room for four children big enough to do most of the camp work, and their mother.

“Sounds good to me,” said Mary, the mother, “I’ve heard of it.”

The Corn Palace is a building big enough to be a theater. Each year a cr...(click to continue reading)

After more than seventy years of absence from her, it is hard to recall in any detail things about Momma and me that would make a story that anyone would be interested in reading. In the beginning Momma was the proud parent of an extremely handsome and well-behaved little boy who was tolerant of his many admirers and their acts of admiration. Momma put up with much of this kid spoiling; it made her proud to be the mother of a star.

Unfortunately the sweet little boy grew into a regular ...(click to continue reading)

The stock market had crashed. Many people had lost their jobs. To an employee of the railroad seniority was a very important thing. My dad had been hired by the Louisville & Nashville Railroad three days after his friend Duffy, and one day before Lawson. Duffy’s job was eliminated, so guess what. Duffy kicked Dad from his job. But Lawson was still around, and the kick moved on from Dad to Lawson. At first jobs were available within a small area, but as the process repeated, available jobs moved ...(click to continue reading)