Tall Tales of a Shorter Nature
The Honors English required reading my first semester at the University of Arkansas was a long list filled with even longer books. I’m talking lengthy, humorless tomes – the kind you only read on assignment or if you’ve a librarian to impress; “The amorality in Zola’s ‘Nana’ reflects condemnation of heredity and environment as shapers …
November 18, 2022
It was April 1976. Since sunrise on July 5, 1975, the country had been gripped by Bicentennial Madness, a fever so contagious and pervasive I nowadays think of it as COVID-1976. Everywhere you looked, things were plastered with the faces of dead white guys like George “I’m on the quarter AND the dollar bill” Washington …
November 15, 2022
January 5, 1973 It was the start of Junior Band Clinic at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. The previous weekend, hundreds of young musicians had auditioned (“tried out” in band parlance) to earn a place in the two bands representing the best of Pulaski County junior high music programs. I made First band, …
January 5, 2022
October 18, 1975 The McClellan High School band had trekked east across half of Arkansas and the entire breadth of the Mississippi River to compete in the Memphis State Marching Contest. This was the performance that really mattered, the culmination of all our efforts since marching camp started up in mid-August. In no particular order, …
October 27, 2021
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
Monday, January 2, 1978. The Arkansas Marching Razorback Band was in Miami, Florida. The occasion was the Balaba Bowl, a charming sobriquet euphemistically named for women’s breasts. We eschewed the customary “Orange Bowl” in favor of “Balaba Bowl,” which had a cultured insouciance and a delicate piquancy, and fell trippingly off the tongue in a …
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