Archives in Category: Small Town Life

Ten minutes to write. Less time to read.

The Battle of the Hardware Stores

Posted on March 5, 2007

I’m not sure of all the details. What I do know is that the ACE Hardware store down the road about three miles from our house closed shop last year and built a new facility much farther away. The former

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Beer Here

Posted on March 4, 2007

This past week Earl and I, along with his daughter and son-in-law, went to the Saugatuck Brewing Company — about an hour from our house — to redeem Earl’s birthday gift certificate. Now maybe you’re thinking we went to drink

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An Old-Fashioned Winter

Posted on January 30, 2007

It started two days ago as snow began falling in the early morning hours. Radio reports said to expect a foot or more. Weather forecasters are usually less than one hundred percent accurate, but they were deadly precise in this

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Monticello

Posted on August 10, 2006

It’s not Jefferson’s family estate; it’s the other Monticello. A small town in southern Wisconsin on a bicycle trail going from here to there to nowhere in particular and to everywhere Americana. Earl and I always feel pleased when we

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Conestoga Neon

Posted on July 27, 2006

For the past few weeks the families who live on my road probably felt like pioneers when they ventured out in their automobiles. I know I did, and it was because the only road leading to where we live was

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The Silverhawks

Posted on July 23, 2006

Last night Earl and I attended a Silverhawks baseball game in South Bend. We’d been there before and found the venue charming. It’s not expensive to see a ballgame, the hot dogs are decent, there is beer everywhere, and the

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Pride

Posted on July 20, 2006

Three days ago I spoke to Loralee Mendez’s college class, the one she teaches on creative writing. She asked me to come because she had used one of my published essays — the one about meeting my father for the

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Green Beans

Posted on July 19, 2006

Neighbors of ours — I’ll call them Mike and Dave — have a stupendous backyard garden; and it seems we’ll be the recipients of their overflow veggies from now through the first frost. It’s exciting because we get to sample

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Tractors

Posted on June 23, 2006

“I have to work eleven to six two nights next week,” Earl said, as we were having dinner at the Mark III last night. I knew he meant as a Sheriff’s deputy, given that these shifts were in the dead

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Berrien Hills Golf Club

Posted on June 18, 2006

This past weekend, we revisited the Berrien Hills Golf Course, known in a former life as the Berrien Hills Country Club.

I wrote about the Club on March 14 as it faced financial demise and decided to cancel its

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