Cheeseburger, fries and a vanilla shake

Friends and other people who know me have often been astonished with my good memory—the way that I can remember specific dates, events, and other reminiscences.
I don’t think my good memory is anything to get excited about—though some people seem to think so. Perhaps a lot has to do with where I am at—you know, [...]

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Cherry’s Merry Pranksters

If you asked Eddie Parker what happened on Halloween 50 years ago, he would swear on his father’s grave that he wasn’t afraid that Old Man Brown was waiting for them with a rock salt loaded shotgun on that fateful night.
“I swear he knew we was coming and was loaded for bear,” said Eddie taking [...]

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The pig with false teeth

Today is my grandfather Erwin “Shorty” Miller’s birthday. I have written a few essays about him and in remembrance of his birthday today (he passed away in 1997) I would like to share this essay.
My paternal grandfather loved to tell a good story. Although he was by no means a skilled raconteur, he just loved [...]

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Goofy Falls Revisited

It is always so cool when something I’ve blogged about—especially an essay about the time I was stationed in Panama or growing up in the Illinois Valley—generates some comments or reconnects me with people from those periods of my life or places I’ve lived or visited.
Today it was someone coming across a blog I had [...]

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Maid Rite

The first time I had a Maid Rite sandwich was back in the fall of 1988 when I was attending graduate school at Western Illinois University in Macomb, Illinois.
My roommate, Kirk Henderson and I lived in an apartment just off the square in downtown Macomb, about a five-minute walk from Maid Rite. And on one [...]

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Corn Detasseling: A summer rite of passage

For many teenagers growing up in America’s Midwest their first summer job is often not working at some fast food restaurant or other service-related employment, but instead detasseling corn.
The neat thing about corn detasseling was that you didn’t have to be 16 to work, but instead only 13.
Back in the summer of 1971, my friend [...]

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Rain on me

It’s another rainy day in Daejeon—the kind of rainy day when you know it’s going to rain on and off all day. There are the occasional cloudbursts, not what you would call “raining cats and dogs” but more along the lines of a swirling, blowing rain that is accompanied by gusts of wind rushing down [...]

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Knee-high by the 4th of July

I wrote this blog post a year ago and the other night, I looked at it again after a friend had mentioned “knee-high by the Fourth of July.” Like a fine wine, it reads so much better now than when I first wrote it. I like this essay a lot. It’s one that I feel [...]

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Are You A Stooge?

It was exactly 33 years ago today when I started Boot Camp at Lackland Air Force Base in sunny San Antonio. Of all the essays I have written the past few years, this would make my Top Ten List of favorite essays.
Anyone who has ever served in the military at one time or another [...]

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Decoration Day

Decoration Day, that’s what my Grandma and Grandpa Miller called Memorial Day back when the holiday was celebrated on May 30 and not the last Monday in May.
The holiday, which was first enacted after the American Civil War to honor Union soldiers who had died in the American Civil War, was expanded after World War [...]

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