SHORT STORIES – Subtle – Satire

Pages From A Changing World

These written accounts are drawn from memory, experience and the occasional collision with history, regulation, politics and timing.

Included here are chronological autobiographical stories about business, survival, adaptation, unexpected interruptions and the strange ways ordinary lives get redirected by larger events.

LOST AT SEA
A TEEN’S ADVENTURE

At fifteen years old, along with my best friend Willie McNeil, known to most everybody as Jay, I took my first deep sea fishing trip out of Pierpoint Landing in Long Beach, California. I got hooked quicker than the fish did. The smell of salt water, diesel fuel and fish scales suited me better than school ever had.

I struck up a conversation with the skipper and offered a deal that favored him considerably more than me.

From Dragnet To Detective

One of the clearest memories from my childhood involves laying flat on the living room floor beneath a giant wooden Philco radio waiting for the opening notes of Dragnet. I must have been about five years old, though at that age time moved so slowly that a half hour radio program felt like a major life event.

The moment those four dramatic notes started, I was completely absorbed. Nothing else on radio sounded like Dragnet. Sergeant Joe Friday and his partner Sergeant Ben Romero spoke in short clipped sentences that made every conversation sound important.