Things were kind of chancy for me back in 2007. I had been laid off at my job and had perplexing trouble in finding another one. My bank account, not large to begin with, shrank more every day. I was on the government dole. Surely I would not...
A couple of miles south of the Colorado River in Austin, Texas—at 700 East Live Oak Street, to be precise—is Stacy Pool. I have fond memories of this spring-fed neighborhood pool which is open year-round and charges no admission. Between October...
I recently updated my will. Not that I fear my death is impending—I don’t. But as I told my executor, Brian Ullom, “You just never know.” It seems that the people with whom I attended high school (class of 1971) are dying with alarming frequency...
As my fiftieth birthday approached, I felt entitled to a vacation. With encouragement from the husband of a friend, I decided to visit a small island off the coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. It was not uncommon for Texans to go south of the...
It was a raucous and rollicking scene at a pair of addresses—9880 Marlin and 9853 Champa—in east Dallas throughout the 1960s. Along with one or two of my brothers, I sat on the living room floor, watched the comedic stylings of the Three Stooges...
I cannot remember doing any mountain climbing before moving to Korea almost 10 years ago. Since then, however, I have ascended and descended parts of Bukhansan, Seoraksan, Taebaeksan, Gyeryongsan, Songnisan, Woraksan, Chilgapsan, Jirisan...
People in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and elsewhere often express bewilderment about how hypersensitive Americans are when it comes to racial matters: always fighting, arguing, bringing up or ignoring past injustices and seeking to take...
Kathleen Monte, my main squeeze from the summer of 1989 to early 1993, had an easy life. Her father had left her an inheritance that approached $1 million. On top of that, her job at IBM paid well. She lived in a house in northwest Austin that...
The Federal Correctional Institution, Bastrop (better known in central Texas as FCI Bastrop) is a low-security prison 30 miles southeast of Austin. It houses about 800 male inmates, most of whom are there for drug offenses and white-collar...
John, Paul, George and Ringo may have been right in asserting that all you need is love. What we do not need, however, is another word spoken or written about Jacquelyn Bouvier Kennedy Onassis (1929−1994). She has been the subject of 33...
Who knows how long Jonalyn Bayotas had been trysting with her beau, and it really doesn’t matter. What is certain is that she conceived in the spring of 2008. This was a problem for Ms. Bayotas because she was a married woman. Her...
It has been suggested that I am too harsh in calling the Jim Crow college football coaches—Bear Bryant (primarily Alabama), Charley McClendon (LSU), Bobby Dodd (Georgia Tech), Frank Howard (Clemson), Shug Jordan (Auburn), Johnny Vaught...
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