Selena is our granddaughter. She is in the fourth grade and we recently attended her spring music concert. It is a tradition at their house to have a post-concert celebration at Dairy Queen and feast on an ice cream treat of each person’s choice. I look forward to that tradition and since a hot fudge, marshmallow sundae is my favorite treat I dream about it from the beginning to the end of every concert I attend. Selena would be celebrating…..
I am sitting at my computer composing another blog and an April snowstorm is approaching. When one’s mind is expecting spring to appear any day the thought of a fresh foot of snow is disappointing. So I’m going to continue in the disappointing vain for a bit. Because after twenty years of growing pumpkins and selling them along the highway that passes our house I have decided to retire from pumpkin farming. As I announced my retirement intentions to the…..
Spring is creeping back into our northland. As the temperatures begin to slowly climb above freezing we anticipate the ‘ice out’ in our ponds, lakes and rivers. We have a creek that runs several hundred yards in front of our house and this time of the year as the snow begins to melt I can stick my head out of our front door a hear the roar of the water churning and tumbling as it makes it’s way to Lake…..
After Kathie and I married our family began to grow in numbers. First our son was born followed by a daughter. Then there was a five year break before our second daughter made her appearance. So for the first eighteen years the male/female ratio in our family was pretty close. We males were outnumbered but not too badly and we were able to hold our own. And then it happened. Our son completed his senior year in high school so…..
My blog title pretty much describes how things went for me last week. It all started when I was driving our car up our driveway. Since we live where the Red River Valley begins the landscape can be pretty much describe as flat. We live out in the country and our property contains one of the few hills in the area. Our driveway travels up the side of that hill. The driveway was covered with several inches of loose snow…..
I imagine with a blog title referring to a double header you are assuming this blog will deal with the game of baseball. But that is highly unlikely since spring training is just beginning and only the pitchers are checking into camp. There won’t be any baseball double headers played for a few weeks. The double header I’m referring to is something that is rare in the small town of 1500 that I live in. This blog is going to…..
It’s time for cabin fever to strike. We are approaching the middle of February after struggling through below zero temps and several feet of snow. Its been a brutal winter so far. In fact as I’m typing this blog a blizzard is raging outside my office window. Thirty years ago cabin fever was a normal part of a Minnesota winter. There were certain things that brought it on. Having to shovel your driveway out before going to work and then…..
It was in the summer of l980 when I set a goal that every June, July and August from that moment on I would dedicate to perfecting my writing craft. My initial dream was to become a free lance writer and produce one successful novel after another. Thus forcing me to leave my high school teaching career behind. But each year as June, July and August came and went I remained ‘novel- less’. The first five summers resulted in strings…..
I spent last week making copies with my laser printer, punching holes in 1100 sheets of computer paper with my three-hole punch and then attaching with painstaking accuracy 3300 of those support circles around each punched hole. I thought the job would never get done! Let me explain how I got myself into such a predicament. Several years ago I was at a mall sitting behind my table displaying my books and attempting to entice shoppers to wander over and…..
I received a surprise in the mail a couple days ago when a note from my Mom showed up in our mailbox. Now our Mom has not been with us for over fifty-seven years. She died of a massive heart attack the day before Thanksgiving in l961. I was a senior in high school at the time. So how could I have possibly received a note written by her just a few days ago? Let me explain. Miss Allen was…..