The summer I spent as a fifteen-year-old working on my aunt and uncles farm in Bucyrus, Ohio was memorable. Every day was a new task and new experience; sheep dipping the animals, bailing hay, shoveling manure, and hunting groundhogs with my cousin Tim. My aunt Mildred was a wonderful pal, more playmate than adult, who […]

The Columbus Indiana Chamber of Commerce and its community of 30,000 were all abuzz with the presence of National Geographic doing a major story on its unique town. Columbus’ largest industry, the Cummins Engine Company, had been instrumental in commissioning world-famous architects to do projects in Columbus. Schools, churches, the library, and a post office […]

                                  Almost all Americans born before the mid-1980s remember the morning of September 11, 2001. I’ll never forget it. The televised imagines of the burning World Trade Center Tower. The speculation of an accident. And then the second tower […]

In 1962, Tom Fritz and the rest of Navy Preflight Class 28-62 endured the traditional harassment and verbal abuse that is customary when transforming civilians into disciplined, in-step, squared away, military peons. We stumbled around the grinder confusing our left foot with our right when executing “Left Column, March!,” and fumbled with those old M-1 […]

Three years ago, I was searching for an auto repair shop not far from our winter retreat in Florida in a lakeside town named Ocklawaha. Driving into this little podunk village, I couldn’t believe it had an auto shop because the town itself had six buildings at most. But yes, a man in a convenience […]