The 1960’s
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Sartorial Satire at Gene Todd’s Pool Room
Dino didn’t compromise fashion for the pool room. Grown men played the game in work clothes, those who worked at anything. Others were unabashed to dress in rags, if rags […]
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Barrel of Grunts
We started playing poker in the eighth grade. All things to do with vice and the cravings of adulthood were scattered in the school yard verbally, in a carnival town, […]
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Stealing With Both Eyes
We started playing poker in the private chambers of a legendary woman, Fatima Franklin. Fatima was a former belly dancer from Baghdad, Iraq, imported and naturalized by marriage to an […]
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First Things First
First thing to do was take a deep breath. It was always colder and windier, the air cleaner to breathe over the ocean. Cold at that hour. Before dawn, the […]
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The Door’s Unlocked
On the way to play poker, I made promises to myself. Not to do this or that stupidly in the game, let myself be bluffed out. I always vowed: if […]
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Fever To Be Cool
The size of the world changed in high school, grew smaller, though a larger world might have been suggested by logic; if logic had influenced beach boys. All of my […]
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Mystery Girl
Where did girls go when school let out? What did they do? I didn’t have the slightest idea. Which is really odd, as much time as I spent thinking about […]
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The Glow of the Past
I love the sounds of words, probably the first reason I became a writer. Later I added the hope of causing folks to laugh and cry reading stories that […]
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Tantalizing Petesy
Petesy liked a small rod, easy to manage close to the pier. He lowered the bait to just above the water. Then he swung the baited hooks above the ocean, […]