Granite Installers
Granite, the material of choice for kitchen countertops, weights about 25 pounds per square foot. The granite I ordered from Stone World, 61.3 square feet, came in four sections. Two were “L” shaped, the other two oblong. Each piece weighed somewhere between 350 and 400 pounds. One piece, the slab where my kitchen sink would be […]
Bonnie And Clyde, Summer of 1932
Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, is reputed to be a student of the Great Depression. I hope he’s read Jeff Guinn’s book, Bonnie and Clyde. In 1932, Texas was hit with dust storms that choked people and animals alike. Women put wet sheets over windows and doors to try to prevent the dust from coming into their […]
Trucks in the Suburbs
I was out in my front yard early this morning, and I noticed a surprisingly large number of pickup trucks driving by. Most of the drivers waved a friendly greeting. They were either small businessmen or self-employed workers: painters, tilemen, yardmen, plumbers, carpenters. You could tell that from the signs on the sides of their trucks and from the things they carried in their truckbeds. […]
Bonnie and Clyde
I’m reading Jeff Guinn’s book, Go Down Together, the untold story of Bonnie and Clyde. When you realize they went on their crime spree during the depths of the Great Depression, that Clyde’s parents lived for years in a tent in West Dallas, that Bonnie could barely walk because of a leg injury, that she had to […]
Competition
Zack the motorcycle-riding, tattooed, painter/minister is back today, doing more skim-coating on my kitchen walls. Yesterday I discovered he’s also a jack-hammer and a cement man. That bit of information came to light when he questioned the plumber about how the pipes had been laid beneath the concrete slab in my basement. If we need a jack-hammer man, clearly Zack is available. […]
Another Rainy Day in Nashville
It looks like rain again. We’ve hardly had a day this summer when it hasn’t rained. Sammy the Singing Cat is sitting outside my window, waiting for me to let him in. He’s not likely to get wet, sitting under the eaves like he is, but he looks worried. There’s thunder in the distance and […]
Copperhead
An Indian girl drowned in the crook of the river where my sister and I swam when we were children. She was in a canoe and the spring rains were heavy that year. The waters ran high and excited. The girl paddled around the bend in the river and was caught in the rush of […]
My Mother’s House
I’d like to spend one last night in my mother’s house. There’s work to be done before we put it on the market, so the electricity has not been turned off. The phone has been disconnected, but I’ll have my cell. If I can’t sleep, I can get up and go into the kitchen and […]
