Tall Tales of a Shorter Nature
The first day of sixth grade, I encountered a brand spanking new set of friends when transplanted from my old cadre into the classroom next door. That day, I met David Stebbins, Carra Bussa, Susan West, Richard Manson, Julia Goodwin, and my first serious crush, Tahnya Hayes, who conveniently sat immediately in front of …
September 14, 2021
My friends were depending on me to knot the rope and save us. Everything hinged on my dusty Boy Scout knot-lore, and things were looking as grim as an 8 am meeting in the principal’s office. Years earlier, my parents decided I needed hobbies other than reading comics and watching Gilligan’s Island reruns. …
August 20, 2021
45 years ago today, May 18, 1976. It was the final days of my senior year at McClellan High School. My stint as humor columnist and cartoonist for the school paper, The Lion-Up, was ending with the last published issue of the year. Good-bye, grueling monthly deadlines forcing me to do something creative for 2 …
May 18, 2021
I recently framed a photo and placed it where I can fondly glance at it between bouts of internet time wastage. It shows the 1973 Cloverdale Stage Band, seventeen young musicians posed on gym bleachers to be immortalized for the school yearbook. This was about the time teenage hormones commenced steering us onto the …
April 23, 2021
A Tail of Woe Monday, January 2, 1978. The Arkansas Marching Razorback Band was in Miami for the Orange Bowl, affectionately called the Balaba Bowl by band members. Perhaps because of their similarity to oranges, balabas was a band-coined euphemism for breasts, which coincidentally were my primary goal in life at that time. Heedless of …
February 20, 2021
It was Saturday night after the band’s holiday concert. Since I was a groovy band kid, I was invited to a post-concert party at the home of band sisters Carol and Cheryl Mathis. Carol played baritone sax, and I played tenor sax, so we often sat together in band. Carol could chew gum and play …
February 1, 2021
It was a warm Saturday at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock in late Summer, 1974. The McClellan High School Marching Lion band was lined up side-by-side just a few steps off the sideline of the AstroTurf field awaiting an afternoon performance. We were bedecked in our hot, black woolen uniforms in the blazing …
February 1, 2021
During the resurgence of classic horror movies in the seventies, I discovered the Universal horror monsters. Frankenstein and his Bride, the Wolf Man, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Invisible Man, the Mummy, the Phantom of the Opera. Resplendent in black and white, I loved them all. But my favorite was Dracula, the …
February 1, 2021
Ninety-nine McClellan band kids had been dropped off that August afternoon with their instruments at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway. About equally divided between sophomores, juniors and seniors (McClellan was a three year high school), we were there to learn our new halftime show for the fall. As it turned out, I was …
February 1, 2021
In February, 1972, Mom and Dad brought home a little fuzzball to join our family. She was off-white (a color the AKC called “champagne”), a little bigger than a softball, with bright, intelligent eyes. She was a poodle, half miniature and half toy, and she was the cutest thing I had ever seen. Rather than …
February 1, 2021