I was sitting on my wooden porch just yesterday morning with a hot cup of black coffee. The early sun was coming up, casting long shadows across the wet grass. The world was wonderfully quiet. Moments like that always make me think about the house I grew up in back in the nineteen thirties. Our […]
The Bell on the Door and the Aisle of Dreams I can still hear the familiar rattle of the wooden door at Mr. Miller’s market. That little brass bell sang a sweet song every single time a neighbor walked in from the cold. The year was nineteen hundred and fifty something. The floorboards were worn […]
There is a specific sound a screen door makes when it slams shut on a warm July evening. It is a quick double tap of wood and wire mesh, followed by the soft patter of children running down the driveway. That sound used to be the heartbeat of the American street. When I was a […]
The Quiet Streets of Morning When I look out the front window of my home in the early morning, the streets are wonderfully quiet. I see paved driveways and closed garage doors. A few birds chirp in the oak trees. It is a beautiful and peaceful sight. Yet, something profound is missing from this picture […]
The Early Days of the Open Road I remember the morning air feeling different when I was a boy. It smelled of morning dew mixed with the faint, sharp scent of gasoline. We lived near Woodward Avenue in Detroit. Back then, getting from one place to another was an event. A grand journey. The automobile […]
The Quiet Morning Reflections The morning air always carries a special kind of quiet before the rest of the world wakes up. I like to sit out on my front porch with a hot cup of black coffee and watch the sky turn from a deep violet to a soft hopeful pink. I have lived […]
The Quiet Heartbeat of Our Neighborhoods I have spent my entire life walking the streets of this great country. I have seen boom times and I have seen quiet times. But the things that always stand out to me are not the tall glass skyscrapers or the shiny new cars. It is the small homes […]
The Weight of a July Afternoon I remember the days when a July afternoon felt like a heavy woolen blanket draped over the entire neighborhood. The air would go perfectly still, so still that you could hear a dog barking three streets over. We would sit out on the front porch in sturdy wooden rocking […]
The Porches of Our Youth I remember the summer evenings of my childhood with a clarity that sometimes aches. The air tasted like honeysuckle and dust. The soundscape of our street was a symphony of human life. Cicadas hummed in the old oak trees. Ice clinked in heavy glass pitchers. Screen doors slapped shut as […]
The Crowded City Streets We Once Called Home I remember walking down near Times Square just after the Second World War had finally ended. The neon lights flickered brightly against the evening sky. The streets buzzed with an incredible electric energy. Every sidewalk was completely packed with people. We were young, and the whole world […]