When I was growing up, a man in our town ran for town board. He had the same last name as a well-respected citizen and just enough people were confused by the similarity in names that he was elected. He made the mistake in assuming that since he’d been elected to...

I have a nifty little app on my smart phone that allows me to look up genealogies, not just of famous people, but of just about everyone, including Mr. Hoban, an elderly man who lived down the street from me when I was a kid. He was a veteran of two wars—World War I...

I’ve been sick this past week. At first, I thought it was a common cold, which isn’t a big deal. Three days arriving, three days here, three days departing. But then it went to my lungs, so I thought maybe it was bronchitis, which I tend to get this time of year. But...

The interesting thing about remaining in your hometown is the difficulty in transcending your childhood reputation. When I was in Mr. Scudder’s ninth-grade government class, I mispronounced the word seniority, pronouncing it as two words senior and ority. That was...

When I was growing up, meals were a pit stop I hurried through to get on with the race. I remember my mother asking me to sit down at the table instead of standing at the countertop to eat. Now that I’m older, I enjoy unhurried meals and plan them out days in advance,...

The longer I live, the more I dream of those who’ve passed away but still populate my sleeping hours. I was talking about this with someone not long ago and they asked if it made me sad, to dream about dead people, and I said, “Just the opposite. It’s like having them...

This is our first Sunday back since Thanksgiving, which this year was a modest affair at the Gulley home. This was the year many in our family dined with their in-laws, so our usual crowd of twenty-five was down to nine. For the first time in 30 years, there wasn’t an...

I bumped into a man this past week whom I’ve known since we were in the first grade. It’s funny, but I can’t shake the feeling that we’re still back in first grade and that nothing has changed. We’re still six years old in Mrs. Mann’s class. Of course, that isn’t...

I’ve been fascinated by politics since 1974, when Richard Lugar first ran for the United States Senate against Birch Bayh and lost. During the campaign, my dad gave me a box of Richard Lugar pamphlets to distribute around the town, which became my after-school job....

We spent part of the week down at Sam and Kelsea’s house, visiting our grandchildren. It was fall break down there, so kids were out in full force, riding their bicycles up and down the streets and playing football in the side yards. The family next door home schools...