View from the Suburbs: Bug Love (not the VW kind) and Taxing Taxes

This Monday has been a long one (and by the time I finish this, it’s sure to be Tuesday), but at this point, I know I’ve made some accomplishments. Tonight I finished my income taxes.  They are not in the envelope yet, but the “written-in-black-ink” forms are all done, and I just need to make [...]

Greece in a $100 VW Bug

One of the things that I have spent some evening hours doing is going through boxes of slides that I haven’t given much attention to in a long time.  The move to my new house has made them more accessible, but viewing what’s on each of the little colored transparencies hasn’t been easy.  The projector [...]

Remembering Mom

My mother passed away the day before Barack Obama was elected to be the next President and gay marriage lost in California.  Three days ago was her birthday. My mother had lived a good, long life, so because of her age and recent deterioration of health, her passing was not unexpected.  Even so, because of [...]

VW Bug–College Life: The Selective Service and Student Teaching (Chapter Five in the VW Bug Chronicles)

Sometime during my junior year in college (69-70), many of us guys sat nervously around the radio, waiting to hear what our draft number would be. I’m not sure how the Selective Service had determined the order of eligible young men to be called up for military service prior to that time, but at the [...]

VW Bug and College Life on the Great Plains (Chapter 4)

I went to college in the middle of the Vietnam War years. Though I’d had my VW painted purple and maybe even had a peace sticker on the back window, I was hardly a hippie or a protester. Right at the time I started college, my brother had just come back from Vietnam and gotten [...]

After Hurricane Ike: Getting Back To a Routine, But Thinking About Blizzards and “Bierochs” (Recipe Included)

This week really felt good–getting back to a normal schedule, after being at loose ends without electricity and not working. I feel so fortunate to have pretty much everything back to normal, when there are so many who don’t, from those still without electricity here around town, to those down on the coast and other [...]

VW Bug and Saturday Night in a Small Town (Chapter 3)

When I was working at the depots at Sylvan Grove, Luray, and Natoma, I drove back and forth every day to the folks’ farm, where I was staying for the summer, so I had no rent to pay. With only to supply my own lunches, I didn’t have much to pay out of pocket for [...]

VW Bug and a Summer Job, Chapter Two

In “VW Bug and a Summer Job”, I was telling about how I got my first car and about working at the Sylvan Grove Union Pacific depot for two months each summer before my junior and senior years of college. Actually, during those summers, I was on the “extra board”. I don’t know if the [...]

VW Bug and a Summer Railroad Job, Chapter One

I think most guys will remember each and every car that they have owned. I know I do. My first five cars were VW Beetles. I’m not quite sure why I got a VW Bug for my first car; maybe it was because it was during the 60s, and they were a popular symbol of [...]

6916th Security Squadron at Athenai Air Base

After graduating from college back in the the very early 70s, I went into the Air Force. I spent almost 11 months, starting in September of 1973, in Washington, D.C. at the Defense Language Institute (Anacostia Annex) studying Arabic and Middle Eastern culture. I also had a lot of other special training before I went to [...]