DEAD BIRD

 …things wished undone…

I’d not hung out with Tommy very much. A roly-poly high school kid who hadn’t yet lost some of his baby fat, he was a shirttail friend of some of my pals. Funny, rarely. Serious, sorta. Athletic, not at all. Down to earth? Yeah. Maybe that. 

     His major asset may have been a century’s-old cabin I’d been told about. It was located an hour away in the Sierra at a gold rush era encampment called Jonesville. Set amongst some towering pines and backed by a fresh, burbling creek, about six miles past where the pavement ended, I only visited Tommy’s place once.

     

My Honda Trail 90 was nearly new. Buddy John’s older Trail 55 had miles on it and John would have made it but his Saturday lifeguard gig cramped his schedule. Buddy Duane had a more powerful 125, but its configuration didn’t lend itself to gravel or dirt roads and when we got to where the pavement ended, he turned back. I motored on not quite knowing where I was headed.

     Jonesville is little more than a collection of hammered together ramshackles, lit by candles or kerosene at night and warmed by cordwood in the woodstove that would also serve as the cook stove. Each place had an outhouse some distance away, old Reader’s Digests sometimes served as toilet paper. To find a particular cabin, one departed the main road that headed over Humboldt Summit. Every worn out  two-track intersecting that main road looked the same. I found Tommy’s on the third or fourth try.

     Dinner that evening would be hobo stew, a mix of ground beef, potatoes, bell pepper and onion wrapped in foil and tossed into campfire coals. Tommy had prepared four of ‘em, so there would be leftovers. He’d swiped some Brown Derby beer from his old man to wash things down a bit. With nothing to clean up, just aluminum foil to ball up, in the gathering dusk we set out so he could show me around.

     We hiked a few yards to the end of his shared road, Tommy talking about the families that would be his neighbors. Most had owned their cabins for generations, many built by a great grandpa or grand uncle. None would ever be for sale. Past the end of the two-track, a single track waded into grasses and mule’s ear. Not far beyond, a tiny creek – Scott John, I think it was called – gave melody to the meadow. A sinking sun offered alpenglow to the eastern hills as a three-quarter moon slipped over their summit. We each took a moment to unload some of that Brown Derby and then toed up the fisherman’s path on this side of the creek. Kid though I was, I was struck by the beauty and the balance of it all. So peaceful. So right. I’m not sure if I then believed in heaven on earth, but on the banks of Scott John, I might have experienced it.

     We came to a rounded outcrop of granite around which the little stream curled. There, the stream pooled. “We’ll catch us some trout here tomorrow for dinner,” Tommy said. “Cook ‘em the same way as tonight so there’s no dishes to do. You did bring that extra foil I asked for didn’t you?” 

     I shook my head. I think he must have asked John or Duane.

     “Well, shee-it. I’ll have to figure something out.”

     And I’m sure he did, but not that I’d remember.

 

Breakfast would be Cocoa Puffs or Fruit Loops, dry – “Just like the Indians ate ‘em” – then we were to go hunting.

     “I don’t hunt,” I said.

     “Doesn’t matter,” Tommy said as he slung a .22 over his shoulder.

     “What’s in season?”

     “Doesn’t matter.”

     “Doesn’t matter?”

     “Yeah. We’re just gonna do some target practice,” and he handed me a gunny sack with some empty Brown Derby bottles tinkling at the bottom.

     He banked the fire in the wood stove and we headed out. 

     Walking up the track that led back to the main road, he told me about Robber’s Roost, a couple of miles over the pass where somebody name Black Bart robbed the Humboldt Stage that ran from Chico to Susanville. “Did it more’n once they say. And he always left a poem. Weird, huh?” 

     Across the road, we hiked on soft, scented duff through a stand of evergreens for maybe a half mile. We came to the edge of a glade where the white, barkless hulk of an ancient yellow pine lay in the morning sun. 

     Leaning the rifle against a standing tree maybe twenty good paces away from the downed timber, Tommy told me to set some bottles “make ‘em a foot or so apart.” 

     By the time I’d lined up seven or eight, I heard Tommy rack a shell pointing the gun at bottle number one. And me. 

     “Hey!” I’m sure my utterance was involuntary.

     Lowering the weapon, Tommy grinned. “Get back over here. Let me show you this thing.”

     I’d handled a neighbor’s BB gun once or twice, and this didn’t seem much bigger. 

     Tommy explained how to put in the bullet and how to sight through the points at the end of the barrel. “Just make sure you point this” – he tapped the end of the barrel – “right at what you want to shoot. You should be able to hit it. It’s pretty simple.”

     I tucked the rifle’s butt against my shoulder and peered down the barrel scanning each of the bottles I’d set on the log. Which one would I choose?

The Oregon Junco is a little black-hooded bird a bit smaller than an empty Brown Derby bottle. Looking a bit like a miniature medieval executioner, Juncos flit through forests and clearings feeding on seeds and only saying eetle, eetle, eetle. I’d seen lots of them on hikes with my dad. Part of the balance, Juncos are prey for foxes and red tail hawks and others. Including, this day, me.

     One lit at the end of the row of bottles. Tommy tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, “You think you can get that one?” 

     I didn’t think so, but I swiveled the .22 in the bird’s direction and squeezed off a round.

 

Looking back over seven-and-a-half decades, now, I am certain that there are acts – sins perhaps – I have committed that will justifiably condemn me to an eternity in hell. Lust. Avarice. Gluttony. But the sight of that innocent little guy simply collapsing out of sight off the back of that log without so much as a sound or a flutter must top the list. 

     Mouth likely agape as Tommy slapped me on the back and uttered words of congratulations, I handed him his gun, hiked back to the cabin, fired up my little Honda and – stomach hollow – headed home.

 

© 2026

Church of the Open Road Press

 

DONATING THE GUZZI

 To everything, there is a season... 

(Ecclesiastes 3:1)

In the summer of 1967, after moving on from Chico Junior High, Bill Reed*, my ninth grade English teacher, took a job managing the Channel 9 auction. He’d been a casualty of staffing cuts at Chico Unified. KIXE studios were then housed under the dome in the administration building at Chico State. Bill asked a few of his former students if we’d like to volunteer to help move merchandise on and off the set. I was the only one who bit.

 

The following two summers, Mr. Reed, then soon to be station manager (if he wasn’t already), asked me if I might volunteer to catalog donated items, manage inventory coming on and off the set and distribute merchandise to high bidders after the auction. He offered to double my pay but then reminded me that ‘Two times nothing is still nothing.’  Again, I bit. 

 

The day we closed our distribution location in 1969, Mr. Reed showed up with an envelope. I’d seen a one hundred dollar bill once before, but I’d never actually possessed one. This one, I would put to good use. 

 

With it and a few other shekels I’d cobbled together, I made a down payment on my very first motor vehicle, a brand new Honda Trail 90. Oh! The places I explored! I’ve been riding a variety of motorcycles ever since.

 

Fast forward nearly 60 years and I find myself less confident in the saddle. Aching joints and slowing reactions have told me it’s time to dismount for good. It is time to part with my beautiful, low mileage 2022 Moto Guzzi travel model that gathers dust in my garage. 

 

Honoring William T Reed who progressed to much bigger (but perhaps no better) things with PBS and remembering our station’s earliest days, I have donated the Guzzi to KIXE.

 

...to everything, there is a season...

 

© 2026

Church of the Open Road Press

 

* One summer evening after the auction had concluded, Mom invited Bill and Marianne Reed to dinner. At the table over a couple of Lucky Lagers, Mr. Reed and my dad discovered they both spent some years of their youth in the Mojave; both attending Barstow High. Dad shared that during his senior year (about 1935), he played center on the Barstow Bulldog football team. It was the first time the Bulldogs won the Desert League championship. Bill shared that he, too had played center and during his senior year in the late 50s. That was the year the Bulldogs won their second Desert League championship.

Reflecting on “The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming!”

 …history, as they say, repeats…

 

As kids, my folks would pile Beebo and me into the Ford and venture from a simmering Chico over to a naturally air conditioned coastal Fort Bragg for some summertime cool to visit a friend’s vacation beach house. Located on the north bank of Pudding Creek, the abode was a cozy affair, cinderblock downstairs for dorm-style sleeping and a redwood upstairs with a well-stocked kitchen, a futuristic funnel-shaped fireplace (very Jetson’s) for heat and expansive west facing windows that offered sunsets over surf more glorious than anything Disney’s “Wonderful World of Color” could ever produce.  (Our family had a black and white Admiral TV, so what’d I know?)

     Each day, a bunch of us would climb down the bluff to play in the sand, make structures out of driftwood, swing kelp round and round over our heads and play tag with the surf. On one of those trips, we were beyond amazed to see two US fighter jets screaming across the ocean, almost skipping on the wave tops, plumes of black exhaust billowing from their twin-engines. They roared by three, maybe four, times. Maybe more. Awe-struck and petrified, steeped in the ‘Red Scare’ of the ‘50s and ‘60s we couldn’t help but wonder: Was this going to be it? 

 

The little get-a-way house is long gone, replaced by a pair of motels. But everything else seems the same. The rugged Mendocino County Coast, lashed by waves and currents has yet to erode away. Gulls still circle and light on white poop-frosted sea stacks a few yards offshore. The occasional doe stands knee-deep in the prairie grasses. Morning fog eventually melts while a crashing surf offers soundtrack for a week or two of upcoming dreams. Always cooler than summertime inland, the drive to the coast always pays dividends. Quaint shops. Cozy B&Bs. Pretty good dining. And those wind-blown bluff trails with all their recollections. 

     A recent predicted 100 degree day in Cloverdale prompted us to escape to a 72 degree Mendocino Coast. Candi and I enjoyed the drive that coursed from vineyards to redwoods, ultimately out to that coastal prairie and the sea. This day, after a bluff walk on the Mendocino Headlands, we wound through the bergs that dot the distance up to Fort Bragg. Tiny streets and homes that seems to have withstood a century of weather’s greatest abuse stand behind crippled fences that once held paint now twined in thistle and blackberry vines. 

 

Returning home, we rented “The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming!” The flick was Norman Jewison’s 1966 send up about the Red Scare and what might happen on Nantucket should a Russian submarine, getting a bit too close, run aground. Except Jewison didn’t film in Massachusetts; he filmed on the Sonoma Coast. Carl Reiner, Eva Marie Saint and Alan Arkin (best actor nominee for the role) lead a cast of character actors we’d seen countless times; each playing with comic seriousness the roles of people who’d allowed a mishap and misinformation to become a credible flashpoint for world destruction. 

     Though the circumstance seems eerily similar to today, we laughed at the absurdity of it all. I enjoyed the peek back at my early days visiting Fort Bragg and the old cars that were not old cars then -- one was a near mirror of our ’54 Ford Ranchwagon. The inlet at Noyo hasn’t changed. Nor has Caspar village. Nor some of the old Fort Bragg downtown. Nor the seascape we’d hiked along only hours before. 

     In a tension-wrought, tongue-in-cheek conclusion, two very real US F-4s scream over the ocean seemingly intent on doing what fighter pilots are ordered do. In that moment I am back on the beach with my buddies, swinging kelp, constructing something with driftwood, paying tag with the surf and wondering if this is the end. Of course it wasn’t. It was just Norman Jewison pulling our leg.

Perhaps related? After 60 years, the movie holds up.

© 2026

Church of the Open Road Press

 

THE GARBAGE MAN. THE GARBAGE MAN.

  

 

 

 

The Garbage Man. The Garbage Man.

 

 

circa 1956

 

Before there were cul de sacs, 

     we had dead end streets. 

I lived on one.

We’d play baseball swinging a stick at a stolen avocado 

     or flinging a pie plate Frisbee across the way 

     or hiding-n-seeking behind the hedges in neighbors’ yards.

Then we’d hear it.

The groan and grind and growl of an old International truck, 

     rusted to a dusty olive gray.

Or maybe it was a GMC.

Or a Diamond Reo.

Whatever it was, 

     it carried music in its note of approach

     and a Quonset on its back 

     with open sides beneath a rounded top.

The garbage man. The garbage man.

 

He rounded the corner

     from the boulevard to our street

     spewing that delicious blue exhaust.

We waved at the driver

And he waved back.

And we stopped our play to chase after the beast,

     never quite catching up

     but always marveling at the biggest thing --

     the biggest event --

     we’d likely see that day.

Grinning and yelling: 

“The garbage man! The garbage man!”

 

 

The garbage man had a helper man

     who hung on the back of the truck,

     hopping off to tip refuse from our rusty cans 

     into a monster bucket slung on his shoulder.

Every few houses, 

     he’d climb up the truck side

     and dump his burden

     into the depths of the Quonset, 

     never waving back.

His hands were full.

Little tykes that we were, 

     we didn’t understand --

     thinking he was mean or maybe grumpy.

So we all dreamed of one day being…

The garbage man. (The one who drove.) The garbage man.

 

 

circa now

 

Three score years plus a few

I now live on a cul de sac.

The garbage truck, 

     now shiny and white,

     (but sans helper – a mechanical claw took his job),

     weaves through our neighborhood.

I -- and the fellow next door -- wave at the driver

     who waves right back.

The garbage man. The garbage man.

 

At once I am a kid again,

     playing baseball with an avocado,

     tossing that pie pan across the street,

     hiding in the neighbor’s hedge,

     and dreaming about one day being…

The garbage man. The garbage man.

 

 

© 2026

Church of the Open Road Press

Selling My V85 tt

Up for Grabs!

2022 Moto Guzzi V85tt Travel 

 

 

Reticent as I am to admit it, aging forces my sale of this 2022 Moto Guzzi V85tt Travel model. With arthritis creeping in and a bit of a blood pressure circus going on, I fear I am losing my confidence in always being a safe rider. Having graduated from BMWs years ago, this is probably the best (for me) touring machine I’ve ever enjoyed.

Details of adventures on this machine (and other stuff) 

may be found at www.churchoftheopenroad.com

 

 

·     About 9,000 miles. 

·     Dealer serviced (until the dealer left town.) 

·     Never down: Never ridden on dirt. (Some gravel, however.)

·     Extras include windshield extension, bag liners – 

·     and a very cool RKA Tail Pack (I love the thing for overnights!) 

 

>     Will likely need a battery soon and tires as well. 

Asking $6500.

(Cash or Cashier’s Check)

 

Contact: dave@churchoftheopenroad.com – (916)580-8858

THE AUTOMOBILE IGNITION KEY

The Automobile ignition key, long a staple of purses, front pockets and key hooks in so many households, has been replaced by the ‘remote,’ a techno-gem that allows one to start the car while still toweling off from the shower, unlock the vehicle with the mere touch of a button and open the hatch by waving one’s foot under the rear bumper. Quoting a wide-eyed Gomer Pyle: “Shazam!”

         The downside to such magic is a) the cost of replacement – they’re, like, 400 bucks – and b) how easy they are to lose. These devises, generally about twice the size of a wad of bubblegum found under a third grade student’s desk, are, in general, always encased in black, molded plastic. Not sure why. In one’s pocket or in one’s purse, nobody’s ever going to see the thing so what difference does the color make? It’s not like a chartreuse remote will clash with the lady’s pink chiffon gown or the gent’s tan, suede Hush Puppies.

         So why not make remotes some garish color like school bus yellow or pomegranate red or fly-eye green? The argument for is compelling: The damn thing might be easier to see. 

 

Today, as our long-time friends rushed to depart – given the eight hour drive in front of them – one spouse queried of the other, “Do you have your remote?” 

         Response: “No, you have it.” 

         “No, I have mine.” 

         “Well, I don’t have mine.”

         “Did you check your computer case?”

         “That’s where I always put it, but it isn’t there.”

         “How ‘bout your jacket? The black one from last night?”

         The jacket in question was retrieved from the behind the front seat, unfolded and squeezed. No remote was found.

         “Did you check your pockets? The ones in the pants you wore to dinner?”

         “They’re buried in my suitcase.”

         The ensuing five or six minutes was consumed with unpacking onto the driveway, groping in dark reaches of the grip, throwing things all a-heap back into the bag and grousing, while spouse rechecked the guest room looking atop dresser and side table, under the bed, as casting redoubtable stink eye toward the host’s adorable little mixed-breed mutt who might reasonably be accused of eating anything found on the floor that was about the size of a large wad of bubblegum.

         “No luck.”

         “No luck.”

 

A feature of the vehicle to which the remote belonged is that the car cannot be locked if a key is inside. Quite the innovation! The scientist in me, observing the proceedings, suggested an experiment. “Close everything up and, with the one you’ve got, try to lock the car. If it doesn’t lock, then you’ll know it’s with you somewhere in the car – not actually lost, just not actually found.”

         Our anxious friends looked at each other and chorused: “Brilliant!”

         In the dim morning light, remaining remote in hand, as my pal’s wife was about to push the driver’s door closed, she spotted a molded black object – about the size of a wad of gum – sitting on the black leatherette console between the seats. Perfectly still. Perfectly camouflaged. Perfectly invisible. 

 

How much more efficient might their departure have been if said remote was the color of any of about 56 of the crayons found in a 64-count box of Crayolas^®?

         Just a thought, GM. Ford. Subaru. Mazda. VW group. Mecedes AG, Toyota, folks who make the Space Shuttle…

         You’re welcome.

© 2026

Church of the Open Road Press

CHARLOTTE

I’ve named her Charlotte. I can’t say why. She lives in the housing behind the mirror on the driver’s side of the Subaru Outback. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her and she won’t come when called. I must admit I didn’t actually discover Charlotte, rather, I more or less deduced her. 

 

 

We don’t often drive the Sube. Our little electric car handles most of our transportation duties. But about three weeks ago, I needed to use the utility aspect of the SUV and, as I was opening the door, I noticed a scant, silky network of threads suspended between the mirror and the window. With my ever-handy bandana, I wiped them away and resumed whatever task was at hand. Four or five days later, the construct had reappeared. Thoughtlessly, I again wiped it away. 

     In little time they appeared yet again. I spied them when stepping past the car on the way out for a walk with Jethro, the dog. This time I would leave the little structure alone. I looked at it again on my return. Checked on it the next day. Was it bigger? Not sure, but I did see a tiny knot at one point in their tiny universe. I peeked into the darkness behind the mirror and whispered Charlotte’s name. She didn’t emerge. Perhaps she didn’t know her name yet. I’d check again tomorrow.

     That tomorrow, a quick run to the garden shop necessitated use of the Sube. Not clearing her work away this time – it wasn’t getting larger, just a bit more intricate and the knot had been wragged open – I was taken by the fact that it withstood the 25 to 30 mile per hour wind to which it was exposed as I motored though town. So I decided I would check every tomorrow – perhaps when I’m going out for the paper at the foot of the driveway. Maybe I’d be lucky and catch a glimpse of Charlotte at work.

     Then came the day of a road trip entailing a couple of hundred slick and rainy freeway miles. Charlotte’s work had been in place when I shut the door and buckled in, but apparently the little web simply couldn’t endure the 70 mile per hour pelting of the precip. That evening, save for an errant thread or two plastered against the driver’s side door below the window, the construction site was as clear as it had been after I’d wiped it with my hankie weeks before. Immediately I found myself hoping Charlotte was somehow protected by the mirror housing.

 

 

I’ve been checking each morning and afternoon for the past week or so – thus far seeing nothing – always bending low to peer into the dark recesses of the mirror housing, gently, softly calling, “Charlotte…Charlotte… Yoo… Charlotte.”

     That’s what I was doing this morning – shivering in my slippers and jammies – simply checking on her while out to fetch the morning paper – when they came out of nowhere – swooped in, I tell ya – and scooped me up. 

     With my one phone call I was supposed to ask Candace, my wife and life partner, to bring me a fresh set of duds to wear, but before I got to that I asked her to check on Charlotte.

     That’s when the line went dead.

 

©2026

Church of the Open Road Press

(With apologies to E.B. White)

MOM'S ACCORD

 “You just never know what might happen.”

 

Mom’s last car was a two-door Honda Accord LX. A ‘78. Manual transmission. She wouldn’t own an automatic because “you’re not really driving.” She’d given up her ’69 Toyota Corona two-door hardtop because brother Beebo needed a car for his frequent commute up to Central Oregon and, although it was far from worn out, she’d pass it on and get a replacement. Mom didn’t like in four-door cars. It seems that decades before, some little kid was riding in the back seat of a big old Buick or Packard when the back door swung open rounding a bend somewhere near Pasadena and the kid fell out knocking his head on the pavement. The kid probably died. I don’t know. But that’s why she’d never let Dad buy a car with more than two doors.

     The Honda was a pretty good car. Honda’s always have been. With gold paint and the upgraded LX appointments, this purchase may may have been the only time Mom, having grown up during the depression, splurged on much of anything. As a teenager, I recall her Hoover being older than I. And the ancient Sunbeam Mix-Master was still working when Dad purchased a shiny new Kitchen-Aid for her one Christmas – a gift for which he was roundly excoriated.

 

     Mom loved the car. Long retired, she rarely drove anywhere other than to Safeway once a week and to Partridge Elementary School to pick up a grandkid when needed. Every month-and-a-half she’d take a six-mile round trip through town to the Chevron station between Broadway and Main Street on Eighth. There were countless gas stations between her north-of-town home and that Chevron, but this one was most convenient because she could turn left out of the little subdivision street onto the main drag that would lead a one-way that headed south though town; left into the station; then left out of the station onto the one-way leading north. She believed in filling up before it got to half-a-tank because, “you just never know what might happen.”

      Once, I exercised some courageous temerity and asked Mom why she engaged in an eight-mile round trip for gas when there were so many other options so much nearer. She corrected me: “It is only six miles!” and suggested, “When you get older, you’ll understand.”

 

Indeed, I was a bit older when I came to understand. One day, shortly after that little Q&A, Mom gave up driving. “Macular degeneration,” she explained. “I can’t see well enough to drive anymore.” 

     “Macular degeneration. Yikes. That doesn’t sound good.” 

     “It certainly isn’t good.”

     “How long has this been goin on?” I asked.

     “Oh, for some time now.”

     The question I didn’t ask was whether she thought she could see well enough when she was driving around that grandchild, but she volunteered: “I drove down to Eighth and Main for gas because I could see out of the driver’s side of the car better than the other side. Left turns always seemed safer.” My eyes still grow wide and my heart still skips a beat or two when I think about that statement. “At my last exam, Dr. Lott, my ophthalmologist, asked how I got to the appointment. When I told him I drove myself, he asked for my keys, which I gave him and then he called your brother Beebo, to pick me up.” She paused. “I didn’t like that he called me ‘crazy.’”

     The Honda would sit on slowly flattening tires for years until she finally let it go. I think to Beebo. (I certainly didn’t need it. It only had two doors.)

 

 

Career necessitated my move out of town – two, maybe three hours away. That conversation took place during one of my once or twice-a-month visits. I would take Mom on errands and then to lunch at the Olive Garden. “Livin’ kinda high on the hog, aren’t we?” she’d comment as she stashed once-warm breadsticks in her ancient purse.

     Mom learned to take advantage of a ride service called the Clipper. At her age, the pass was free or nearly so. With a mere phone call, she could arrange trips to doctor appointments or to Safeway. “It’s so convenient and so simple and the drivers are so nice. They help me in and out and load my groceries.” She smiled over her tepid cup of minestrone and looked at me through her dim brown eyes and smudged – because it no longer mattered if they were smudged – glasses. “Everyone should use the Clipper.”

     “Everyone?”

     “Well, everyone who gets to be a certain age,” she said. “You know, Barbara’s still driving and so is Grace. Tooling around town in those big old cars. Probably blind as bats. Ellie is too and she’s at least eight years older than I am.”

     “So is their vision beginning to fail?” I immediately wished I’d not chosen that word.

     “I don’t know, but they’re all far older than seventy-five and that’s just too old to be driving around. They’re just accidents waiting to happen.”

     “Have they already been in accidents?”

     “They’re all at least seventy-five! You know your Dad had to stop driving when he was seventy-one.”

     “But Dad had a stroke and was suffering with dementia. Couldn’t find his way around.”

     “And he couldn’t even find his damned glasses!”

     I had to nod.

     “I was seventy-five when Dr. Lott made me stop driving and I think that’s about old enough for anyone!” Adding, “You know, you just never know what might happen.”

 

 

Mom lived independently for at least another decade fumbling blindly around the house, and then in assisted living for about another ten years. 

     Like all mother's sons, I rarely reached accord with mom's announcements or encyclicals. I sip the occasional whiskey and smoke the occasional cigar. I like my steaks medium rare rather than well done. I listen to some rock n roll music along with some classical and some show tunes. I’ve long been registered a Democrat. Our Subaru has four doors as have most of our cars. Hell, my ‘91 Jeep didn’t have any doors at all and neither of our kids nor any of their friends ever fell out of any back seat of it or any car we ever owned. 

     So what I think I’m most haunted by is Mom’s ‘still driving at seventy-five’ decree. 

     You see, in May of this year, I turn seventy-four.

© 2024

Church of the Open Road Press