We rose before dawn, in the dead of winter, when the only light was the moon’s reflection on the Nebraska snow. We lived in a small, four-room guesthouse – a generous term, as the “guesthouse” was a two-story garage, the top half converted into living quarters: two bedrooms, each barely big enough for a bed,…
Category Archives: Among friends
Dinner with Ronnie.
You need grappa, he said, and walked away. We shifted uncomfortably, uncertain about what would happen next. We were ready to go, just unable to make our bodies move. Abbiocco. And now we couldn’t leave without being rude.
Ever green, and orange and black.
Memphis, once known as the hardwood capital of the world, was built on a bluff, the Chickasaw Bluff, along the eastern side of the Mississippi River. The soil on the bluff, according to my limited understanding of it, is an interesting mix of loess (windblown silt), glacial gravel and alluvial deposits, good for filtering water…
Not tedious, but brief.
For the past few weeks I’ve been in the good company of more than 200 million people around the world, all of us still hearing the lingering echoes of John B. McLemore and Brian Reed, seeing ghost images of clocks and sundials and tattoos, and a maze…. As you know either very well or not…
I know a mama.
Last we were together (three weeks ago? four?), we were talking about seeing and being seen. You are thinking, perhaps, that my memory is dodgy, that I’ve forgotten about the Frye boot story in between. What you don’t know is that I wrote the letter to The Frye Company at the end of February, weeks…
Don’t forget to write.
I caught a nasty cold in Seattle, and it was – by and large – my own fault. It’s possible you’re wondering, “what was she doing so far away from Memphis?” and I’ll tell you. But first I must give credit where credit’s due. The reason I got a cold was that I failed to…
The comfort of familiar things.
I’ve been thinking about getting a tattoo. If we know each other, in real life, then this revelation may be shocking. If we know each other very well, though, then it’s possibly not unexpected. I have been thinking about it, a tattoo, though not terribly seriously, for longer than I’ll admit, even here. Tattoos, like…
Men fish.
The “sea of red” at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska holds just enough magic that one single visit, on a bright, clear game day, could sway even the most resistant football hold-out, namely me. The stadium, seats brimming with scarlet sweaters, is exponentially more impressive in person than on television. It is a spectacle that…
