The Wise-Ass Doesn’t Fall Far From the Tree
The Spring / Summer issue of the Tulip Tree Review has been released and once again Tulip Tree Publishing has selected one of my memoirs for inclusion in the book. This issue is dedicated to “Wild Women” and it just so happens that the wildest woman I ever met was my mother. Those of you who prefer the tactile feel of paper can find the book on Amazon at https://rb.gy/uiof0My father was a reserved man but that didn’t affect me. In my faith I am considered a wise-ass because my mother was a wise-ass.
To meet my mother was to be instantly won over by her oversized personality and generous sense of humor. She was a product of the great state of Indiana and in the parlance of her Hoosier upbringing, my mother Tessie was a hoot. She waged war on the safe, the conventional, and the reserved. Laughter was her ammunition and she always left the chamber empty.
Read MoreThe Jersey Slide
The Tulip Tree Review “Humor” issue has been released and it includes The Jersey Slide.
This is a tale about how a logical midwestern driver learned to drive in the chaos of New Jersey. This is a must-read for anyone who has ever dared drive in the Garden State!
“Whoa! When did you become a Jersey driver?”
I hadn’t seen much of my brother Jeff since I’d moved to New Jersey and his remark caught me off guard.
“What are you talking about?” Okay, so maybe I did roll through a stop sign with only the slightest pretense of braking but in my defense, I replied, “I stopped like thirty yards back.”
“Sure.” he said, “but you didn’t stop when you got to the stop sign. You coasted right through it on the bumper of the car in front of you, which coincidentally, didn’t come to a stop when it was his turn either.”
“Look. It’s a stop sign. I stopped. End of discussion.” I shrugged and added, “Besides, if you stop at a stop sign in New Jersey you’ll get rear-ended by the guy behind you.”
Read MoreWalk It Off
Walk It Off was recently included in Tulip Tree Publishing’s anthology; Stories That Need to be Told 2022.
This is a tale about a lifetime of missteps, mishaps, and misbehavior, and the cure for the broken bones that resulted.
My parents raised four boys, two girls, three dogs, two cats, six gerbils, a turtle and a bat. Ours was a household filled with love, companionship and mortal danger. If we survived the dog bites, snakebites and kid bites, we still had to contend with smallpox, measles, and mumps – all of which could kill you or seriously hamper your social life. By necessity my mother was adept at the mending of cuts, burns, bee stings, botulism, plague and constipation.
Smooth As Silk
Since this platform is called WineSnark, I should point out that, although this tale never actually mentions wine, I did drink several bottles while I was writing it. And the story begins with the protagonist suffering from a hangover that would probably kill a Kodiak bear so I think that qualifies as wine-blogworthy.
Smooth as Silk was recently included in Tulip Tree Publishing’s anthology; Stories That Need to be Told 2021 and received the book’s Merit Award for Humor.
With a year of high school yet to complete, I looked west from the interstate entrance ramp, stuck out my thumb and turned my back on New Jersey. Three days later I woke up in a Racine, Wisconsin hospital. My throat was raw from a stomach pump, my back ached from the impact of a hundred cars plowing into one another, and my head throbbed from the impact of several gallons of Milwaukee beer and a bottle of cheap scotch. I was happy to wake up alive but unfortunately a hundred thousand brain cells had perished during the night.
It was this chain of events that brought me to live with my older brother Doug and paved the way for the tremendous bond that was to develop over the next year. Yes, this is the story about the love between me and my first car.
Read MoreWineSnark Gets Physical.
New Book Features WineSnark Memoir
I’m holding a book in my hands and I love the feel of it. My friend Robin Robinson, author of The Complete Whiskey Course: A Comprehensive Tasting School in Ten Classes¹ explained, “There’s something special about the tactile pleasure of holding your thoughts in your hands.” Conscious ideas and experiences suddenly have paper and ink to smell, an evocative cover to see, and rustling pages to hear. But it’s the weight in my hands that makes me realize that when it comes to the five senses, nothing gets my heart thumping like the sense of touch. I can’t help myself, I’m a tactile kind of guy (no, no – not tactful – you regular readers know me better than that). What I mean is that when it comes to pure joy, no other sense has been more universally incorporated into my experiences than the sense of touch.
WineSnark Memoir Included in Book Anthology
The story is also a finalist in the 2018 Preservation Foundation’s Storyhouse Writer’s Showcase.
Life on the Road Without Any Brakes
Gloria Steinem wrote, “More reliably than anything else on earth, the road will force you to live in the present.”
Oddly enough, Ms. Steinem’s words inspired me to revisit the past. This is a tale about life on the road – a passion I discovered long before wine but found no less intoxicating.
It’s not like I thought I was going to die.
My canteen had run dry the previous day, the last of my granola two days before that. I desperately missed the water, the granola not so much. Sure, I was in a desert without food and water, dehydrated, exhausted, a Barry Manilow tune stuck in my head, but I didn’t think it would kill me. By the tenth chorus I only hoped it would.
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