Author’s note: Writers normally have a moral in mind when penning a story. Not so for most who are simply living life during their Great In-Betweens. During your author’s midlife wanderings on two wheels of American back road wilderness, there was a moral but only in retrospect. These multi week rides with other riders tested […]

Editor’s note: This is about back country roads and their motorcycle riders. There is a difference between America’s western and eastern country roads. The latter are seacows compared to the tireless workhorse country roads of the west. When a rider hooks himself to a wonderful eastern road, challenge and thrill are certain but not the […]

Coastal Empire WW I: the good old days, when we could ship parcels containing artillery shells, hand grenades and mortar rounds via the railways and Post Office I was born a few years after America won the Last Great War. I saw the birth of a promising new post tyrant universe and then watched from […]

From the time James Oglethorpe and the original colonists arrived in 1733, the new colony of Georgia had plans of freedom for all, unless you were Catholic.  Or a lawyer.  Or if you drank. The first of these bans to be lifted was that of “spirituous liquors” in 1742. Shortly thereafter, relations between England and […]

I had been smoking a lot and worrying, and no doubt the attendant coughing and hacking was taking its toll, but whatever the cause, the figure in the bathroom mirror before me was no longer young. Neither was he old, and I understood suddenly – though surely Marlow had known it before? – that there […]

Please consider these assorteds on old age as a batch of letters that someone sent you long ago. They are no longer lost somewhere in the postal system. They have been delivered after travelling the world’s continents and seas. Let’s examine their numerous postmarks, forwarding stamps, addressee unknown return to sender marks before finally opening […]

Marlow’s Coastal Empire Author’s note: what follows under this title is the first of a series of collected thought fragments, remembrances and observations. As a whole, they should not be taken as a defense of or apology for my mortal doings nor recommendations for my readers to follow. They are solely a compilation – a […]

Heavy Rain My parents were well past the halfway mark to heaven during their life’s last stage four years ago, when the morning sky over the Caloosa River went from gray to almost black and a thunder clap accompanied the first few raindrops that fell. They were heavy, warm, big drops that would have soaked […]

Fall was full on and the night cool. Waiting for the supermoon show at the beach at low tide ebb was like lying in quickly cooling syrup accompanied by the steady whine of sand gnats. The still air was perfumed with electrified sea salt smell. During this latest supermoon’s rising on Monday November 14th, we […]

Note: I wrote today’s piece several days after Hurricane Matthew raked the Georgia coast. It was one of the pieces of recovered data from my failed laptop. Marlow’s Coastal Empire Matthew was the kind of storm whose Savannah area rainfall total suggested his moisture laden sky had binged on diuretics before his arrival. Ten inches […]