Fiction: I Am a Prayer(Excerpt from the novel)

By Michael Hanson

[Editor’s Note: I Am a Prayer is the author’s latest published novel (Atmosphere Press, November 15, 2022). It is about loss and gifts, and the efforts we make to find meaning in life when tragedy is an inescapable aspect of love. Raymond Shackleford’s journey takes him to a variety of venues — from a dance club to the depths of his own past — but it will be a chance encounter with a stranger that changes everything.] 

My friend Lauren always said, ‘Write the ending you want.’

Fiction: B-B Ranch (a short story)

Larry Bailie helping a friend put
up some fence in the Everglades

By Larry Bailie

My Aunt Pat and Uncle Dutch Bailie had a cattle business called the B-B Ranch, in a place in the middle of nowhere way out north of Naples called Corkscrew. They had no children, although she had a boy from her first marriage named Jimmy who was away in the Navy. Around Christmastime, my dad told me we were going to Uncle Dutch’s ranch to pick up meat for the family. I, being the oldest at the ripe old age of eleven, would go with him to help.

All Over the Place: Hunger Pains (short story)

By Michael H. Brownstein

I’m finished with the second box of matzo and we still have a hundred or so miles to go. One piece of matzah every ten to twenty miles. It keeps me awake, and I like the way it crunches, changes texture, leaves a slight film in my mouth. I always take a five- to ten-mile break between each piece.
    “Hey,” I wake my wife, “I need a bathroom and I’m out of food. We’re coming on to Dwight. I’m going to get some food for us there.”

Acting Citizen: At a Cars and Coffee Meet

By James Knudsen

I ended last month’s column with mention of a very rare, very beautiful, and very expensive automobile, the Ferrari GT 250 Lusso. Rare (only 351 were built) beautiful (subjective, yes, but trust me it’s beautiful), and expensive (it cost $13,375 in 1964; the same amount would buy you two Cadillacs off the showroom floor). This was a car for the few.

Acting Citizen: Old Enough to Understand

FWD
(front wheel drive)

By James Knudsen

In his September column, “At Random: Things I Will Never Be Old Enough to Understand,” Paul Clark (aka motomynd), chronicled some things he doesn’t like or just doesn’t get. Front wheel drive (FWD) made the list, and from his column it seems to fall in the category of something he doesn’t like. As the son of an early adopter of the FWD train layout (see my “Fourth Saturday’s Loneliest Liberal: About the Panhard,” November 2014), I found this troubling to the point of offensive, and so, today’s defense.

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (69) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
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all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

Sunday,
July 18, 1920,
7:00 AM

The Citizens Bank of Tampa was considered Tampa’s first high-rise building of any kind. It was built in 1913 at 701 North Dale Mabry Boulevard, with ten stories, and was one hundred and twenty feet tall. That in itself had not been terribly interesting to Joe Ashley. The fact that Eli Witt, the founder of Have-A-Tampa Cigars, deposited his receipts into Citizen’s Bank on a regular and predictable basis was, however, very interesting.

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (68) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
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all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

Sunday,
September 3,
1922

Ma Middleton had been cooking since before dawn. Red had helped cart wood for the stove and been rewarded with extra coffee and biscuits, with ham and redeye gravy.
    Ramon had come back from Wauchula with his family on Monday, the third of September, two days after the attack. He brought his family to retrieve the body of their brother, son and cousin, Luis Xian Alejandro Alvarez y Gomez.

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (41) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
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By Roger Owens

Friday,
July 9, 1915,
concluded

The gang converged on the bank at what they thought would be near the end of the business day. They didn’t know about the workers coming in from Fort Basinger and Belle Glade, and as they wheeled into the crushed shell parking lot, the tangle of trucks and cars came as a surprise.

Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (20) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
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all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

Tuesday,
July 4, 1922,
8:00 PM

When Red pulled up outside Senegal’s Sumptuous Palace, there were only two cars there under the oak trees besides him. The building was done up like a Mississippi riverboat, the clapboard walls white, with red railings painted on. At the center of the blue painted paddlewheel was the door, which was almost round. The second floor sported real railings like the observation deck on a steamboat, on a balcony for the girl’s rooms. Senegal had told him looking up at a woman enticing them from a balcony was a traditional whorehouse touch that men enjoyed. The façade above the second floor was all pastel curlicues and gingerbread.

Want to Know Who Set the Tablefor the Big Lie?

Go Look in a Mirror

By Paul Clark
(aka motomynd)

Even though I’m 67 years old, fairly world-wise and extremely well-traveled, it wasn’t until five years ago – when my son was almost two years old – that I fully realized that a shocking number of people are innately and almost maniacally dishonest. I had always noted that many people – including “good” people, and definitely not just “bad” people – routinely used exaggeration, partials truths and “white” lies in their normal conversation with me, but it wasn’t until I saw them blatantly lying to my toddler-age son that the point hit home.

Bellator Senex: People are a lot like cars

[Editor’s Note: Both Ed & I were born the year of this pickup –
him on today’s date, me 5 days later]

By Ed Rogers

People are a lot like cars. When new, they all (except for a few lemons now and then) run great, look great, and are able to fly down the road.
    Not all cars are equal, however. Some have parts that wear out before others. Some are driven too hard and just can’t endure the strain; they end up in the junkyard before their time. Others are cared for and pampered, but still break down.

Roger’s Reality: The Camper Saga, Part 3

By Roger Owens

This is the bad part, with a very bright spot right in the middle of it. We’re in South Carolina, rolling down I-95 at a smart 63 miles per hour. That’s as fast as I can go without the transmission on my old Explorer shifting up and down, and it sucks gas bad enough without pushing it. Like I said, we’re not in a hurry. I reckon we’re getting about ten miles to the gallon, two hundred miles on a twenty-gallon tank. Just about right for breaks for old dogs, and old people as well.

Duel with a Demon? Or a Streak of Crazy Coincidences?

By Paul Clark
(aka motomynd)

It was a quiet Sunday night at home, the winding-down of a great weekend. We had finished the house projects on our list, enjoyed a wonderful three-mile Sunday-afternoon walk/run along the shore of our favorite local lake, and were settling in for a quiet dinner.
    And not just any dinner! This was our post-hike family-tradition greatest-dinner-ever: a vegan, gluten-free, Mediterranean style Daiya frozen pizza, to which we added extra mushrooms, olives, and pineapple before cooking it absolutely perfectly in our air-fryer pizza oven. It isn’t often we have a perfect weekend and get to top it off with the perfect meal, but this weekend we achieved the near impossible.

BODY COUNT: Killers (a novel): Chapter 44. Louisiana Blues

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It took Wayne and Tony two weeks to cover all of the shifts at the truck shops east of Baton Rouge on I-10. It was time-consuming work. They were able to cover only a few miles of interstate highway in a day, what with having to check three shifts at each of the truck stops. Then they had to backtrack to check the weekend crew. The frustrating thing about the slow progress was that outside of the one girl – Tammy – no one knew anything.
    After that they went all of the way to Sulfur, Louisiana, and began to work their way back to Baton Rouge. Tony was happier now that it was April. The rains still came but it was warm rain, and flowers were coming up everywhere. Tony estimated that at the rate they were going it would be into May before they would have hit all the shifts along the freeway.

As the World Turns: The Changing Climate

By Ed Rogers

A warming trend followed by a freezing trend may be a sign that the greenhouse effect is increasing because of human activity. Global warming is often linked to the burning of fossil fuels – coal, oil, and natural gas – by industries and cars. These chemicals are also called greenhouse gases. This is the wisdom of those who are in charge of knowing such things. I not only believe in climate change but I believe some of these things they attribute to climate change are causing damage to our planet. We as humans would be happier without all these emissions even if they did nothing to change the climate.

BODY COUNT: Killers (a novel): Chapter 43. More Killers

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Taylor and Wayne dropped their rental cars off in Memphis and picked up their own cars. By the time they reached the Hideaway – Blake had decided the bar didn’t need his name on it – Rainbow’s 1942 motorcycle was parked outside. Wayne and Taylor pulled in beside it.
    Inside, at the big table, were Peter, Blake, and Tony, aka Rainbow. They all had beers and were laughing. Taylor jokingly shouted, “So this is what goes on when I’m not here!”
    Blake hollered back, “Get a beer from behind the bar and join us. We were just talking about your latest case.”

BODY COUNT: Killers (a novel): Chapter 34. Evergreen Park

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Shelley knocked on Bobby’s door at 8:00 Monday morning. Getting no answer, she went to the lobby. The night desk clerk was filling out his paperwork, getting ready to go off duty. “Excuse me, I’m looking for my partner. We checked in Friday night. He was in room 346 and I was in 348.”
    The clerk looked at his call sheet. “Yes, here it is. He had a 6 a.m. wake-up call. At 6:15 he showed up here dressed in running attire.”
    Shelley’s alarm bells went off – too much time had gone by since 6:15. She rotated the call sheet and noted that two others also had a 6 a.m. wake-up. “So, you haven’t seen him since he left for his run?”

BODY COUNT: Killers (a novel): Chapter 12. BBQ

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The three of them drove up the driveway to Betty’s house at 6:00 sharp. Blake parked among the seven or eight other cars out front. As they disembarked the Jeep, they heard the sound of country music and loud voices coming from behind the house. “I don’t believe this 6-pack of beer is going to go very far,” Bobby said as he pulled the beer from the back seat.
    Blake nodded in agreement. “She never said it was a party, but then again she never said it wasn’t. Shelley, will you get those camera pens out of the glovebox? We might as well start getting pictures now. They walked around the corner, each with a ballpoint pen equipped with a small camera tucked in a chest pocket. Two clicks and it was on; one click and it was a writing pen.

BODY COUNT: Killers (a novel): Chapter 4. The Operation

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Captain Lenders was notified of Blake’s transfer and Blake spent the rest of the day at the Federal Building having his picture and fingerprints taken for his new identification. He filled out one form after another, guided through the maze by June, as Mrs. Warner now wanted him to call her. The whole process took three hours, after which June gave him her card and told him to go to any A.P.S. gate off Airways Boulevard across from the airport and they would contact a driver to escort him to the building he and his team would work in.

All Over the Place: My Town’s George Floyd Protest 2020

By Michael H. Brownstein

No life matters until all lives matter. Black lives matter, too.
Are we not human? Do we not love our children, eat with forks and spoons, go to school and go to work?
Give me liberty, give me justice, do I not have a right to breathe?
                    —Protest signs