The Story Of The CSS Hunley In the dark of night on February 17, 1864, a muffled explosion echoed across the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. The newly constructed USS Housatonic, a 1200-ton sloop, armed with 12 cannons, under the command of Captain Charles Pickering, began to list and sink into the murky depths. Within […]
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“Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.” Mark Twain “The Lowest Animal” The event had been hyped up for weeks by local hotel owners, carnival operators, beer distributors and other hucksters. As intended, the profit margin
The Story Of America’s Noah’s Ark In Reverse Read More »
The Quest for the Fabled Lost Locomotive There were the three of us on that steamy summer evening, bug bitten, sweat soaked, caked in mud, seemingly defeated in our quest and yet determined to continue. There was my dad, then in his 80’s, who thought he knew the location of the site deep in the
We Would Have Made Indiana Jones Proud Read More »
The great cat sat across from me on the concrete floor of her spacious run, nonchalantly licking her paws and giving every appearance of paying me no mind at all Tracker, a 150-pound Florida panther, was behaving as finicky as Morris, the tomcat who advertised a brand of cat food on TV years ago. “She’s
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“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” William Shakespeare “Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” I once had a best friend named Lexi. Lexi’s father was a German shepherd, and her mother was a Siberian husky. Lexi was intelligent, precocious, independent, stubbornly focused upon her own private agenda.
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A Roving Correspondent Roves In recent times, whenever I have crossed the border to visit our friendly neighbor to the north, I have found myself doing so with a sense of relief, as though I have been carrying around a backpack filled with bricks and can finally put it down. All too often of late,
“We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.” Louise Elizabeth Gluck Farm life has always followed the cycle of the seasons. For instance, as I was growing up, June and later in July if there was a second crop was haymaking time. Then, as the intense heat of late July and
There was once an old farmer in my grandfather’s neighborhood named Crow. He was known locally as Old Crow, and I only know two things about him, that he was impoverished and that he had a large family. When my dad was very young he wondered aloud at Old Crow’s impoverished state and at the
The Life And Death Of Human Bluegills In The Global Farm Pond Read More »
In his latest Louisiana-based crime novel, author James Lee Burke has one of his characters observe, “There are things that no human being should see or hear or know about.” However, choosing to ignore unpleasant realities does not eliminate them. For instance, throughout human history nearly all societies have devised ever more unique and gruesome
The Ultimate Sentence Read More »
I do not know Sandy the raccoon’s story from beginning to end. I suspect that he was born in a den in a hollow tree somewhere in the swamp behind my grandpa’s farmhouse. He was orphaned at an early age when his mother was killed by a passing motorist on State Route 511 and was
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