In August, 1985, I began my first semester of studies at the University of Central Florida. I had earned credit for English Comp 101 as a result of Mrs. Alice Wright‘s wonderful AP English class that was the highlight of my senior year of high school, so that first semester, I set my sites on Comp II. Awaiting me and many others there in a packed classroom on the UCF campus was Mr. Ronald Vierling. Over the arduous weeks that followed, he became my arch-nemesis, the chief disruptor of my life, and a frustrating symbol of many precarious aspects of…
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“Ramble” is a writing project I began in 2002 challenging myself to write simply, counting down from 73 lines to one, where each line has 38 characters or less. There are five entries left to write after tonight, when I finally set down these lines for Riley, which I’ve been thinking about for quite some time, knowing I wanted to write one for him before he turned seven. Here you are my son, written at the start of your first grade school year, with a note to remind you that you are already a great person to your father. In…
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I’ve written here before about my “Ramble” creative writing project. On Dec. 30 of 2009, I sat down to write a Ramble entry for my late grandmother Beatrice Ridings, who was widely known to many as Granny Bea, Aunt Bea, or Ms. Ridings. I had two wonderful grandmothers who have now passed on, and luckily for me, Grandma Eileen Darnell, who we called Bam, was also tight with Granny Bea, so on more than one occasion, I was able to enjoy them both simultaneously. At long last, I have published a separate collection for Grandma Bam, and below, I am…
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In case you missed yesterday’s report, we did finally catch my dad (aka Big Jim, or BJ) at Cracker Barrel, along with Peggy, my step-mom. We all had a nice dinner together somewhere around 9pm, and then we all made it to the Ramada there in Crossville, Tennessee. But darned if BJ didn’t have another trick up his sleeve, and sure enough, he beat us to Boone… by about an hour! First, though, I need to back up a little.
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Saturday, June 2, 2001: Almost There The wake-up call came at six Central time, and it actually succeeded in getting Beth to arise (it most certainly was wasted on me). Once awake, this hotel wasn’t a hard one to leave quickly, but we were a little worried to find Callie sitting in the front window, considering that pets weren’t allowed. Oh well — we figured that, if we receive a call from someone asking why they’d seen a one-eyed calico cat in our hotel room’s window, we’ll just say, “You saw a what?!”
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Friday, June 1, 2001: Catching Up Waking up, of course, there they were, under the bed; and there I was, lifting the bed so Beth could scramble under to grab them, give each of our cats their ‘medicine’ and stow them in their carriers. This stuff is getting easier…. We’d settled into a nice hotel on night one, but still the sounds of the highway and the endless passing trains got us going early — or so we thought.
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Thursday, May 31, 2001: Simply Grand It was time to get up and get moving, but by letting Maggie slip under the covers and curl up, we were able to grab a few more minutes’ rest. Lying there returning to our senses, all the great memories were just cobwebs; the focus was all about getting on the road. All the last junk was piled near the door soon enough, and we made it to Budget by seven, just after they’d opened, to get Dad registered to drive the truck. We were among the first customers in our favorite breakfast spot…
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And, indeed, it was lights-out for those cats at about 6:45 on Monday morning. Beth was having none of Callie’s hiding under the bed trick — went right in after her — and the carriers were soon stuffed and loaded into our barely-recognizable car, and we into our Isuzu Turbo huge-windowed cab, the accelerator mashed into its position against the floorboard and 60+ mph average began counting down the 370 miles separating us from the property we’d agreed to lease for the next twelve months. Arizona continued impressing us with multi-colored silhouetted mountainscapes, and Saguaro Cacti covering stretches of mountain…
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It was 4 in the morning when Maggie woke me up to let me know Callie couldn’t sleep. I got up and played with them a bit, peeking out the window to see that our possessions were still ours, then climbed back into bed to make the most of the warm bed where, unbeknownst to me, Beth was having a nightmare. She had also been woken up and had seen me looking out the window, but then, she fell back asleep. In her dream, I turned to her from the window and said, “Well, we might as well get going,”…
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At the free continental breakfast at the La Quinta (which in Spanish, according to a famous comedy routine, means Next to Denny’s), we met an older traveling salesman named Frank. As we spoke, he told me I need to get an agent in LA, and also that I’d do well to tie-into USC. People might not have much advice to offer if you move to many cities, but it seems almost everyone knows the recipe for success in LA. Frank seemed to have the handle on the basic ingredients, didn’t he? Bidding him adios, we loaded our cooler with more…