One night in the mid-90s, I walked into an ATM on 23rd and 6th Avenue where a man was sprawled out on the floor. It was two in the morning. His wallet was flipped open a few feet away from his open hand. He was looking up at the ceiling and seemed okay aside from … Continue reading Billy’s Topless
Here is another South African memory from Mark Grolman: I was lucky. I lived in an architect designed house. No project home for me. In the small, gold mining town in South Africa where I grew up having an architect designed house was special. Besides the generous sized bedrooms, one of the things I remember … Continue reading Coal
It's one of those days at work where I'm absolutely paralyzed. Hogtied. Brainfreeze. I can't do anything. So what do I do? I go to Google Street View. I take a drive in my childhood neighborhood in Jackson, Mississippi. Take a look at the old house. There it is. There's the lawn I mowed a … Continue reading Manhattan Academy
I was miserable. Living with my cousin in a cheap-ass apartment complex. Just living there in that shitty dump, I felt like I had hit the underside of the bottom. Something about those places always just feels like you’re in hell. They’re so cheap. Feels like you’re inside a cardboard box. They all have the … Continue reading Cedarstone
Mark Grolman, a writer in Australia shared this memory with me. --- I spent my childhood in a small town in what was then the Transvaal Province of South Africa. That was mostly in the 1960s - during the time of Apartheid. The town, called Carletonville, is a regional centre for gold mining, about 50 … Continue reading Village of Hope
Craig Dennis, a writer raised in Mississippi now living in France shared this memory with me. He came to New York over the summer. We met at a bar under the Brooklyn Bridge, drank beer and ate calamari. Then we went up to Chelsea Piers and had more beer on the deck of a moored … Continue reading Stormy
Memphis - 2005 A few years ago before Cathy dumped me, I was down in a swamp in Mississippi. I popped this squirrel out on a long branch, and it dropped like a wet rag into a clump of honeysuckle and briars so thick it was like a wall. I got down on my hands … Continue reading The Voodoo Stick
