It wasn’t when I got the hang of cursing, exquisitely and generously, tutored by the bigger kids at the back of the school bus. It wasn’t when I puffed on my buddy’s mom’s unfiltered Kools in the woods – throat raw, lungs afire, coughing triumphantly. It wasn’t when I thumbed through Dad’s Playboy magazines and […]
My name’s Walter. You probably don’t know me, but you may have heard me playing the guitar. You wouldn’t know it, though. I’m a studio musician, mostly playing at Modern Recording on Chicago’s South Side. When they want someone who can do that old Motown stuff, sometimes I get the call. I play live two […]
The sky is a deep, brooding red, as if the heavens themselves had been scorched by the flames that raged below. Smoke billows in thick, acrid plumes, curling around the remains of once-proud buildings reduced to skeletal shells by the relentless bombardment. The air is thick with the scent of burning fuel, melting metal, and […]
It’s the first Tuesday of September, so here I am at your doorstep with this month’s supplies—mostly food and books, as usual. When you open the door, it’s like I’m looking at an old photo, you and the hallway tinged a sentimental amber by the redshift of the decades between us. “Thanks for bringing all […]