Playing an acoustic on the beach is pretty safe because the first thing people think is “bum”…… ‘walk way around this guy.’ It helps to have a coffee cup with you to sit on top of the guitar case. That keeps ’em way out there. But in a campground, five…

TESS COOL STORY ON KINDLE VELLA EPISODES 1 T0 16 EPISODE # 2 MOM AND DAD COME BACK (excerpt) And this was not my cot. This was clean straw. Not the loud clanging of the 6:30 bell and a shiv in my ribs. This was far off roosters and chattering martins. Turtle doves…

THE SIX COOL STORY ON KINDLE VELLA EPISODES 1 to 21 EPISODE # 5 ABEL AND RIMA MEET (excerpt) I was a single shot purist. Like Davy Crocket and a flintlock. But it was so beautiful that morning that I climbed a tree. Man I could climb. I was up…

DON KARL EPISODES ON KINDLE VELLA EPISODES 1 TO 13 EPISODE # 13 TORNADOS AND SCORPIONS (excerpt) Doctor Barragan figured no one would suspect that a kid would be carrying prescription medicine in a burlap feed bag, barefoot, almost always running and as agile as a rat. Hard to catch. Probably the…

A BEAUTIFUL TATTOO I have been so broke at times that I actually had to play music at weddings. That is about as low as you can go. I mean, after wedding singer where do you go? What is below that? Uber driver? Walmart greeter? Bum in the gutter? Anyway…

SIX COOL STORY PART 1 #1 TO # 20 FOREWORD Stories of the old south. Southern Illinois that is. Rural southern Illinois. Told in the voice of a kid starting when he was 10. The dialogue follows his speech as is, or as was. Children in the face of the…

SIX COOL STORY #21 TO #30 SIX COOL STORY #22 SIX’S WORLD’S GOOD AND BAD I loped button up the driveway I had seen blow by our car window countless times…. where I had walked, then ran, in the stormy blindness of my mind. Where Thommy and Chloe floated down…

SIX COOL STORY PART 3 #31 TO #44 SIX COOL STORY PART 1 STORY #31—THE HOOK Old Dobber could actually play snooker pretty well. But he took forever to shoot. So about 30 seconds into staring, raising his head, closing one eye, sliding the cue….then calling it all off like a…

Dear Mr. Jagger…..February 23, 1964 Olney, Illinois, U.S.A. Dear Mr. Jagger: Could you send me an application to be in your band? I think the Stones are so coo. In fact I can't even write out the whole name of your band because just to see or hear that whole coo name…