A bittersweet cocktail takes a writer back to memories of his mom and childhood visits to a long ago wonderland.
Yes, winter is finally here in all its brisk and snappy glory. Of course I live in Southern California and as of this writing, it’s 80 degrees outside. But I’m a New England boy at heart and winter will always be a snowy time of year in my mind’s eye. And even for us Left-coasters,
The long wait is over. Whether you celebrate the outcome or mourn it, this is us. One nation, indivisible, as our kids still pledge? Maybe that’s the underlying question. Below, a handful of images that made me pull over on my own American journey.
In the summer of 1976, my best friend and I, between our junior and senior years of high school, drove across America. We traveled 10,090 miles, much of it on back roads, camping and Motel 6’ing it all the way. We fished with hunters in Minnesota, and got high with girls much older than us
A man dangles out his 10th floor apartment high above Vanderbilt Avenue, squeegeeing his windows as a crowd watches from below. “Not worth dying for if you ask me,” the dude says to his date at the outdoor table on the packed street. “I dunno. Clean windows?” Her eyebrow goes up like a Venetian blind.
There are two sayings I carry around in life. Never look back. And don’t wish away the days. So instead of curling up into a fetal ball and waiting for November 3rd, I bought a hunk of snapper. It was an impulse purchase. Baseball without fans I find as flat as day-old beer. But the
As the season of meats comes to a close, I find myself wondering: What will we miss? It was a long, hot summer marked by awkward stutter steps. Who went out, who remained locked in? Did we behave or misbehave? When do we mask, and with whom? Can anyone still define “quarantine?” Does anybody really
A dear friend recently sent me the recipe for a cocktail called the French Riviera and I immediately flashed back to my childhood. Our family had embarked on a trip across Europe and while I was only 12-years-old and innocent to the temptations of alcohol, the experience remains indelibly stamped in my mind. We visited
Boy is it hard to find a silver lining, but the novel coronavirus has had one unintended consequence that dared to fill my heart. Both my college sons got blown off course and ended up back at home –– my home! –– which means I have been cooking for more than one, for nearly the
A long time ago a man called Harry, with arms like bourbon barrels and a laugh imported straight from an Irish pub, motored up in his putt-putt outboard to the rocks on a spit of land in northern Massachusetts and dug into his cooler. He offered up to my friends, Andrew and Mary, and myself,