Author’s Note: After a long break in the tales of my long ago road travels in the southern building trades here is something new. – Marlow December 22 2019 Honor Flight 42 Shipmates and I have funded in the past several Navy veterans’ honor flights, helped other honorees fly off and celebrated their trips at […]

We whiskey-and-gin campfire boys were all bit players. No leading actors in this group. But each of these characters — and they were all characters — was surreal, absurd and fully aware of a serious kind, and was possessed with such detail and warmth. They found amusement and enlightenment poking fun at certain characters and […]

Editor’s Note: Having recovered part three of the Mac Showers biography, I will send it along as an attachment tomorrow. There is more I intend to inflict on you, notably the connection between the passing of my folks, and the real compassion and mentorship that marked the last career Mac invented. More after Ada’s war […]

Wassup, witches? The tricksters didn’t start to show at our front door last night until more than a quarter of the city’s official 6-8PM period has passed. Then it was like repeated tsunamis hitting the steps to our front porch. It was glorious with the timid, the downright scared, the bold, the grabby, and the […]

Editor’s Note: Soaking, deep penetrating chill rain in Virginia this morning. The squashed raccoon on the road was eaten by our congress of vultures. A load of crap was moved to the garage yesterday, a triumph, and oh, by the way…you might have heard something about the World Series… – Vic Author’s Note: And now […]

Author’s note: W and I have been on the road as well as dealing with some family issues, hence the Coastal Empire’s brief hiatus. Now let’s go back in time for another short tale from my migratory construction worker days. -Marlow JR, or Jer-ree as a few fellow US Army types called him, was injured […]

Author’s Note: WARNING: This may offend some; so, I apologize in advance. – Marlow Editor’s Note: This is another very strange week. The Turks are moving into Syria- and against the Kurds this morning, This look-back to other times suggests we might survive, but it will take courage. – Vic Vietnam Vet Prayer I’m unsure […]

Editor’s Note: The Swamp is literally boiling these days. The passionate partisanship is oddly familiar if you can take yourself back to the late Sixties and the weirdest year of them all- 1968. I had hoped to never see stuff like that again. The circus in progress now certainly has potential to match it or […]

Editor’s Note: I meant to memorialize yesterday- the one year anniversary of tripping on one of my elegant Persian rugs and crashing headlong into the wall at my little pied a terre at Big Pink. Recovery has been almost as interesting as the immediacy of the blow to the head. That was recent, compared to […]

Long ago when I lived in the deep south and worked as a migratory construction worker, I bought and drank my first ass pocket of whiskey (an 8 ouncer) at a gasoline station. The job site and the rental trailer I lived in were way out in the sticks, there were no bars or roadhouses […]