Abe Lincoln and Al Capone Sometimes “Uncle” Bud disappears for a week or two on “fishing trips.” He always has a nice car for trips, usually a Buick with a big trunk. Pays cash for ’em, too. Always says he got the money from cashing in his “G.I. insurance.” Less said about that the better. ...
Category: Stories
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True Tar-Heel Tales
Great Granddaddy Honeycutt and Teddy Roosevelt Children, I haven’t ever been on what you might call speakin’ terms with any presidents. But I have seen four or five of them from pretty near, and I want to tell you that they ain’t nothing special. They have to get out of bed in the mornin’ and...
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True Tar-Heel Tales
Uncle Bud “Now take this here Trayvion business,” said Uncle Bud. He stopped and took a sip, just like he always done before delivering his wisdom. Uncle Bud worn’t axtually my uncle. In fact, he worn’t no blood kin at all. He had once been married to Mama’s cousin. She had run off with a...
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The Genesis of Tourist Traps
According to the 1940 census, Framalopa County had a population of slightly over 8,000. About half of these lived in town, and the other half lived in the country: truck farmers and cattlemen who came to town on Saturdays to buy the few necessities they couldn’t raise themselves. At that time, Florida was the second-largest...
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Granny and Jesus
Granny had been brought up in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and went to church once every two or three years, usually on Mother’s Day, hoping my father would join her and learn to appreciate her innumerable virtues. He never went. On Sunday mornings, he worshiped God at the Bobby Jones Golf Course—no exceptions. ...
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Plane Crashes
Before World War II, airplanes were something of an oddity in the skies over Framalopa. We would stop and gaze at a Piper Cub chugging along through air, occasionally cutting its motor and gliding for a few seconds while we held our breath. I can’t recall ever seeing a commercial airliner winging its way from...
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Sunday Dinner for the Boys
Once the airbase was operational, the streets were overflowing with uniforms, particularly on weekends. Most, like Stella Pegram’s husband, Mark, were Army Air Corps. A few were British. They would wander the streets on Sunday mornings, staring into the windows of closed shops, hoping to be hailed and invited to dinner by some local family. ...
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Myra Cunningham
I don’t know how Myra Cunningham came into our lives. Perhaps my mother met her at the USO canteen, where women, married and single, volunteered to serve coffee and cookies to soldiers, talk to them, play bridge with them, and help them with letters back home. Myra was a compact little woman with blonde hair...
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My Father’s “B” Stick
Congress passed a law mandating a national speed limit of 35 miles per hour, and the whole country slowed down to a crawl. To be sure, some people broke the law, but many more obeyed it—or came close to obeying it. Every so often when we felt like supporting the war effort—and had nothing better...
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Hollywood’s War
Are we currently at war with militant Islam? Not in the same way we were with the Germans in World War I and the Japanese and Germans in World War II. In the two world wars, it was a people against a people, tribe against tribe. Our hatred for the enemy was passionate and pervasive. ...
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The Celebration of War
World War II surprised most Americans, who, in those days, paid less attention to the rest of the world than they do today. In our town, World War I was a dissolving memory, kept alive by the sale of paper poppies and the sight of a few leftover casualties who crept along Main Street, dragging...
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Ophelia and Genavy
In one of those arrangements that defy explanation, Ophelia and my mother frequently ate lunch together. Usually—but not always—Ophelia would make the sandwiches or salad, serve my mother, and then fix an identical plate for herself. My mother would sit at a small, round table in the breakfast nook; and Ophelia would perch on a...
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Eddie Constable
In the 1940’s, towns like Framalopa were too small for chains like A&P and Piggly Wiggly. Consequently, the landscape was dotted with small neighborhood grocery stores, usually mom-and-pop operations with little merchandising and a spare inventory. You were lucky if you could choose between two brands of pickles. The vegetables came mostly from local truck...
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Mrs. Pyle and the Japs
The Pyles lived on the corner of Bahia Vista and Pomelo. Even on the sunniest day, you could barely see their one-story house, crouched in the dark shadows of three sprawling oaks hung with Spanish moss. The huge lot on which the house sat was bordered by a chain fence. No one else in town...
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One Civilian Casualty
In 1942, I had never met my Aunt Ann or my four first cousins. They’d moved in the 30’s from Jacksonville to Los Angeles, where Uncle Stuart worked for Walt Disney. Among other things, he provided the voice for the hunter in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Every so often, Aunt Ann would send...
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Stella in our Garage Apartment
During World War II, we rented our garage apartment to Army Air Corps officers and their wives. The Army had commandeered a small airfield just outside of town, where instructors began to train fighter pilots. When the local newspaper published an appeal for citizens to rent rooms to servicemen and their families, my parents felt...
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A Game of Bridge on a Hot Afternoon
In retrospect, I find it shocking that, during World War II, Americans submitted without resistance to a kind of government-imposed serfdom that transformed our habits and our hearts. We have always prided ourselves on being independent, rebellious, even irreverent in the face of authority. In our mythology, we celebrate the defiant eccentric, the rebel, the...
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The Fortune Teller
“I don’t want to be married any longer.” “What does that mean?” “What I said.” “You don’t love me.” “I don’t love anybody.” “You loved me. Or said you did.” “Nobody’s responsible for what they said twenty-five years ago.” “I love you.” “I wish you wouldn’t.” “Am I so tough to get along with?” “Not...
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Your Hit Parade: A Story
“If Mel Torme is ‘The Velvet Fog,’ shouldn’t I at least be ‘The Elegant Mist’? Surveys indicate that even during station identification, which this is, you enjoy hearing my radio voice. From the studio at the antenna farm, I, Luther Craft (formerly Larry Krabenhoff), read your news, weather, commercials. I take requests, introduce singers, bands. ...