The Lotto Ain’t the American Dream
Horatio Alger may have made it big with nothing but elbow grease, ingenuity and a few breaks. But behold! You can make it with nothing more than a dollar and a weird combination of numbers based on birthdays.
Savagery on the Listserv
I was regularly involved in neighborhood politics and served as a steering committee member for my neighborhood association. I found the rather strict guidelines for no commercial content on the neighborhood’s Yahoo Group listserv rather stupid. In particular, the listâs moderatorâwho had the power to add or delete membersâoften took harsh stances to violators. After watching one poor woman, a neighborhood massage therapist, get booted from the list for posting her services, I decided to create two fictional neighbors who get in a rather nasty dispute over commercial content.
The Anglo Window Decal Project
What can I say other than I always yearned for my own surname in Old English type on my rear window. (I didn’t have a truck, but I did have a Pontiac Bonneville passed down from my late grandfather.) But “D’Amico” sounded almost Latino, so I opted for an experiment to try “Smith.”
Hitting the Trails
Had a blast revisiting many of the trails I’ve traipsed and ridden over the years to put together a big piece for Austin Monthly. (Although I wasn’t psyched about only getting 75 words a trail!) Also got to meet and profile a top-ranked racer (Tristan Uhl) and visit with the manager of Mellow Johnny’s for …
Frank at the Dump
âHow come you donât take a lot of this stuff home,â I ask Frank Uhr. âI mean, the good stuff.â Frankâs the guy that works on Wednesdays at the Spanish Pass dumpâreally just a little trash drop-off run by the county.
âOh Iâm tempted to, sometimes,â he says. âA lot of this stuff is useful, still in good shape.â âBut only if you have use for it.â
A Treehouse?
When I was a childâoh about second grade through sixth gradeâI spent most of my free time in the tree tops in a little copse in a field behind my house in Richardson, Texas. On blistery days I’d sway with branches in the bitter wind and survey the long furrows through dormant cotton fields. Suburban …
A trip to St. Peter’s
What was that smell, the one that brought back more than memory, since exact pictures didnât form in my mind? The smell carried feeling. It must have been the pews, for they are one common denominator in all churchesâCatholic Churches at least.
Opportunity Knocks â Not Once, but Twice A boyâs chance meetings with the stars of ‘Boyhood’
It was a chaotic time of life for us as my wife and I traded off on time spent caring for our first child and trying to work on our businesses. So as yet another hectic summer day dawned in 2002, a knock on the door sent my wife, Rebecca, scrambling to scoop up the 9-month-old Alex and shush Banjo, the Labrador Retriever barking menacingly through the window…
Smoking in Serbia
…the Serbians on the train that day smoked more than any humanly possible, which may relate to why they were painted as unhuman and inhumane in their war against Muslims.