Motorsports and American Culture: From Demolition Derbies to NASCAR, Edited Mark D. Howell and John D. Miller (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield) I’d never heard of this book until a copy of it was given me by my friend John Edwin Mason, who, in addition to teaching African history and the history of photography at …
Tag: Monte Dutton
My Guy Dave
I’m sentimental at times. In 1983, when my baseball hero, Carl Yastrzemski, said farewell to Boston and trotted around the perimeter of the Fenway Park field shaking hands, I cried when I watched the video. I never felt more stupid. It was a highlights video of Yaz’s career, and I didn’t expect to cry. Watching …
One of My Daddy’s Days
This was a Daddy Day, which is not to say I am one. It is a subset of what my late father called “one of them Dutton deals.” To me, a Daddy’s Day is one in which very little gets done. My father, who died nearly 22 years ago, could waste a day as …
Service After the Sale
I’m sure the employees at the nearby cell-phone “store” dread to see me coming. Maybe they’ll forget by the next time. It frustrates me that technology is supposed to make our lives easier, and it doesn’t. It plunges everyone into a black hole of communications with impersonal recordings, interminable periods on hold, and a barely …
A Fable of Raised Expectations
During the heyday of high school football in this town, lots of fans used to watch the team practice late in the evenings, after the mill shift ended. It was the late seventies, and that was a decade that saw Clinton win four state championships and reach the finals twice more. One day I was …
Them Ain’t Got No Coffee Blues
Supposedly drugs do not really make a person creative. They merely make him think he is creative. On the other hand, supposedly, image is reality. I don’t feel creative this morning. I feel listless. I feel dull. I need drugs. The drug is caffeine. I didn’t realize I was addicted to coffee until the apparatus …
Free and Uncertain as Life
At last, the showers were giving way to the flowers. At the precipice between April and May, Ronnie Whitfill was perched, and the lure of adulthood flowered. The farm boy had a smart phone, a Twitter account, and a restlessness that came every spring but never more thunderous than in this, his senior year of …
A Reluctant, Roundabout Request for Assistance
I have a few thoughts this morning on writing, publishing, etc. Perhaps I should just make them, huh? I wouldn’t need to announce I have some thoughts if I’d just write them. Oh, well. I’m not entering this blog in a contest. I do that with the short stories. Regarding short stories, yesterday was a …
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The Smart Kid
This is sort of a “Man Bites Dog” story, or, perhaps, “Girl Bites God.” Macy McMahon awakened before the alarm went off, as per the usual. She turned it off, got up, rubbed her eyes, gathered her wits, and strode down the hall, where she knocked on the door and yelled, “Rise and shine!” …
The Inevitable Descent
Here's the full short story previously posted in four segments. I hope you enjoy it. 1.THE FEELING BOTTOMS OUT The first observation of Clyde Barns on his birthday was that his Facebook timeline was crammed. Some just cut and pasted “Happy birthday,” some took the time to add his name, some attached cartoons with rabbits …
Nightrider's Lament 