This is the story of a deer, a man, a woman, a tree and two funerals. It takes place in Georgia, down near the Florida line, on a hunting plantation that belongs to my father’s brother. It’s no Tara and the house on the land is no Twelve Oaks. It’s a modern house, simple and practical and beautiful in its practicality. It sits on a rise with a view of...
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If the ‘50s was not a shining moment in human history, the decade at least landed us with an abundance of game shows. Truth or Consequences, The Price Is Right, Queen for a Day, and a few years later, Let’s Make a Deal. These were the four that played at our house, and I considered it daytime TV at its finest. How I became a game show aficionado puzzled me...
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The story goes that when my father’s parents divorced when he was eight, the reason given was not infidelity, moral lassitude, or drunkenness, but messiness. Theirs was an example of the inability of two people to share a life when one was messy and one was neat. There are many apocryphal stories in my family and this may be one of them, but I suspect...
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Every summer I make a pilgrimage to New England where I did some of my growing up. In a rented car I drive the familiar roads of Massachusetts and Maine, reacquainting myself with humidity and the color green. The farther north I go the fewer people there are, and along the coast the air cools and becomes salty. I don’t pull off the highway to find a bowl...
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When I was a chubby five-year-old in puffed sleeves and shiny red shoes, and people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I had one answer: I want to be famous. I had learned not to say I wanted to be a fireman. Everyone laughed at that. But I couldn’t say what people expected, a teacher or a nurse. I didn’t want to be a teacher or a nurse. My first...
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