The summer of 1957 I worked at Dick’s Men’s Shop and Bremerton Locker Club for $1.00 per. “Watch out for the union man,” Dick warned. “He’ll take your money’n go.” Dick kept me hidden when the union man’d show. Then he caught me right and took my money, sure. Instead of $1.00 per, Dick now…

The eldest child of Polish immigrants, she spoke only Polish until first grade, where everybody else spoke English. The experience made her relationship with the language she would use all her life a permanently uneasy one. At Penney’s for my back-to-school attire, she had to check the crouch of my new bluejeans because it embarrassed…

Sometime late in the languid afternoon dreamscape, both fans turning, one thrush calling, a peach-colored finch chirp-chirping, the sky suddenly clears of all but white vapor pillows, cool and far-off. A passenger jet on approach to Inouye International dozes its way to silent touchdown. The rocky behind-the-house scatter gurgles muted babble (a Lowe’s fiberglass fountain)…

“Any news?” “The usual,” Whitey replies, looking up from his Sunday Post-Intelligencer. “And the unusual?” “Now and then. Keeps me coming back.” Fresh flattop haircut. White sidewalls. “Uh, were you and Mom going anywhere?” “Today?” “Uh-huh.” “The car?” “Yup.” “How long?” He holds his safety-shielded shipyard reading glasses in his right hand. “Couple hours.” “Three…

Last night I Googled “Buy My Happy Horse Shit,” something realtor Willis J. Everist once said, giving the straight scoop on what makes the world go around. Google offered Hunter S. Thompson and Charles Bukowski, so I opened an article on Bukowski, who once wrote, “Grate art is horse shit. Buy tacos.” For what it’s…

Let’s hear it forthe fourth month ofthe year, The cruelest month, some say, but I dunno, How could it be, when everywhere I hear The croon ofthrush, offinch, ofcardino? Themonth that gave me to this spinning marble Can’t be the worst one out of allthe twelve, For if it hadn’t spring birds’ velvet warble, Where…

Two burning, barking, wheezing days and nights of Musterole and mustard plaster, Time to get serious: Five fat cloves of raw garlic, dipped in coarse salt, and chewed thoroughly. My eyes flooding, nose gushing, she’d spoon two big fingers of fresh honey into a clear glass tumbler and add hot water. “Now stir,” she’d say,…

This wacked-out little finger? It was third grade, he was Melvin, she was Irene, and I was in the way. To Melvin I was. Nobody asked Irene. Irene had dark eyes, raven hair, a quiet smile. Melvin wanted to see me at recess to bend my fingers backward. I didn’t know that’s what he wanted…