No one ever quite understood how Vernon Simms could be so closemouthed about it all. Ever since his six improbable years of marriage to the esteemed (just ask her) Annabeth Chase ended in divorce, the lanky handyman hadn’t spoken a peep about it. And believe me – when the town’s only power tie-wearing female executive marries, then divorces, its happy-go-lucky handyman, it’s...
Nickel Ross died yesterday. It wasn’t really a surprise – he was 96, and when you’re 96, your chances of making it through a Wisconsin winter are even at best – but he was such a constant that it’s got all of us taking time to remember. For me, I keep going back about a decade ago, back to the weeks leading up to the second weekend in July, when the consensus at the Prop Wash...
Leland Potter is one of those guys who can’t stand a quiet bar. He’s getting on a bit, so maybe it has something to do with keeping ahead of the regrets. Or maybe beer makes him chatty. Either way, silence is a scab he just can’t leave alone. “So, tell me perr-fessor,” he says, shifting over to the stool next to mine. “What’s the deal with this Hemingway guy?” Big topic, Hemingway. “Long...
Austin has a girl. Sort of. That is to say, he’s got a girl he considers his girlfriend, except for the fact he’s never met her. Most of the time she’s thousands of miles away; therefore, it’s tough, even for a romantic like Austin, to think in terms of girlfriend, to put it into those words. It’s easier just to say he’s got a girl. Out there. Somewhere. So, Austin has a girl. He calls her...
Clarence Adderly looked over the top of his camera.”A little to the left,” he called out to his wife, motioning with his hand.”I’m going to lose you to that dark sky if you don’t step lively.” That dark sky, a growing band of clouds steadily filling up the distant valleys but not yet interfering with the sun, was the reason for this trip to the hilly orchard...
There’s no getting around it: if you’ve got a cabin, you’re gonna have visitors. Friends, family, business associates, friends of friends who “just happened to be in the neighborhood” — the woods are crawling with boorish, demanding, dismissive and altogether disruptive people who’ll think nothing of interrupting your hard earned tranquility with their...
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