Buncha Stories

You might hear these if we were at a bar. . .

Bob Sloan

Bob Sloan
Location
Rowan County, Kentucky,
Birthday
May 31
Bio
Writer, three books in print, two more coming: http://bobsloansampler.com Don't have --and don't want-- an MFA

MY RECENT POSTS

MY RECENT COMMENTS

Bob Sloan's Links

Salon.com
OCTOBER 18, 2010 12:27PM

Billy



At the beginning of a weekly pilgrimage to the grocery, my wife Julie insisted on going to a store other than the one we usually shop.  She wanted a new hanging plant for the front porch, and a big grocery out by the interstate has a flower department that… Read full post »
5 Comments
AUGUST 17, 2010 1:25PM

Executor

Life's long ride on the Damned Old Wheel of Time is next to invisible, taking us in a great circle so gradually we hardly ever think about it.  We re only marginally aware of filling spaces which once belonged to our parents, often overlook the fact we ve begun to carry… Read full post »
3 Comments
AUGUST 16, 2010 4:40PM

A Good Friend

A GOOD FRIEND

Hang around with me long enough, sooner or later you'll hear me claim that Michigan's Jim Harrison (he wrote Legends of the Fall, Dalva, The Road Home and some other good stuff) is America's greatest living writer.  A few years ago, until I noticed a new Harrison… Read full post »
9 Comments
AUGUST 16, 2010 4:40PM

A Good Friend

A GOOD FRIEND

Hang around with me long enough, sooner or later you'll hear me claim that Michigan's Jim Harrison (he wrote Legends of the Fall, Dalva, The Road Home and some other good stuff) is America's greatest living writer.  A few years ago, until I noticed a new Harrison… Read full post »
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AUGUST 16, 2010 4:40PM

A Good Friend

A GOOD FRIEND

Hang around with me long enough, sooner or later you'll hear me claim that Michigan's Jim Harrison (he wrote Legends of the Fall, Dalva, The Road Home and some other good stuff) is America's greatest living writer.  A few years ago, until I noticed a new Harrison… Read full post »
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AUGUST 4, 2010 3:32PM

FIRE

Back when Shrub's pointless war in Iraq was just getting a good head of steam on, someone e-mailed me a set of photographs showing some poor s.o.b. nearly incinerating himself, trying to burn an American flag.  Hundreds of similar images were going around in those days.  If you've got… Read full post »
2 Comments
JULY 24, 2010 9:02PM

OLD ROCK

OL' ROCK

Once upon a time in Rowan County, Kentucky, a perfectly wonderful dog roamed ridges and left his mark in valleys around Holly Fork, where my father was raised.  Ol' Rock ran free and unfettered the way all country dogs once did.  He was one of a… Read full post »
2 Comments
JULY 14, 2010 4:14PM

Porches

One thing that marks a home as really "Appalachian" is a decent porch.  In lots of states --even southern ones like Louisiana-- people have "stoops," a square yard of concrete on top of a few steps. a place to stand while getting a door open.  What they call a porch in… Read full post »
5 Comments
JULY 3, 2010 11:44AM

THE ROSE

It is a sweet thing to find out someone I loved is remembered by others as well.  
Even when it takes months to find out who they are.
The only kin I personally knew who's buried at the Enex Cemetery, my family's oldest burying ground in… Read full post »
3 Comments
JUNE 28, 2010 5:24PM

MOM

One March Saturday some years ago, I was listening to Morehead State University's public radio station as the sun burnt off remnants of the year's first real thunderstorm.  I was only killing time, until a couple of things carried me to some realizations I'm glad I made. 
First,
… Read full post »
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JUNE 20, 2010 3:43PM

A Reading Lesson From My Father


Ten yards ahead, 
my father climbs 
his ridge of flint and oak.  
This hard, mean ground is his library:
In the track of animals I don't know,
the call of birds I can't name,
from distant rustlings and 
a single bee's clumsy bumbling 
at mountain laurel,
he reads and… Read full post »
2 Comments
JUNE 16, 2010 8:58PM

All Things Newburghish

A month before we got married, Sparky and I made a trip east, so I could meet her folks.  Their home is in Florida, but we met them in Williamsburg Virginia, where my wife's surviving grandparents lived.  
My new in-laws are good people, and getting to know them… Read full post »
3 Comments
JUNE 8, 2010 7:59AM

Blow Vipers

When breezes out of the south bring a defrosting reminder spring ain't so far off, in Kentucky we speculate about snakes.  Even when we have snow on the ground later than usual, as the days grow longer, reptiles come to mind.  Get three people together and one will almost certainly insert… Read full post »
3 Comments
JUNE 1, 2010 3:34AM

Open Call See

I'm coming to this a bit late, but when dianaani had made an open call, asking "Please post a photo. . . .and then write what you see," I knew just what photo.  Here it is:

                          … Read full post »
3 Comments
MAY 30, 2010 5:23PM

Decoration Day: Nobody Remembers William Hargis

One Memorial Day, my wife and I spent some time standing over a soldier's grave.  William Hargis wasn't kin to us, so we hadn't thought to bring flowers.  Julie and I stayed a while though, and in the springtime peace of a country graveyard some old –but never really answered–
… Read full post »
3 Comments
MAY 29, 2010 1:23AM

Courage, As Taught by a Couple of Field Mice

I may have to fire me a cat or two, maybe three.  Nine of them live at our house, and they're sluffing off, getting fat and dozy instead of earning their keep with normal cattish things.  The other day, reaching to scoop dog food out of the barrel in which it's… Read full post »
2 Comments
MAY 22, 2010 7:57PM

Doc Brown, Heroic Grave Robber

This is about a man who's a legend where I live, a man who walked the same ground as the rest of us, but left such a track that more than seventy five years after his death, people still talk about him.  
When I was a boy it… Read full post »
2 Comments
MAY 16, 2010 1:03AM

A Lesson From the Ugliest Dog I Ever Met

The dog I called Butch taught me an important lesson while he was part of my life.  When he showed up one day, I figured he'd been dumped along US 60, which runs near my house.   (For what it's worth, I hope an especially warm corner of hell is reserved… Read full post »
2 Comments
MAY 15, 2010 3:05PM

The Lonesome, Terrible Death of the "Red-headed Woman"

Recently I posted an essay I wrote some time back, entitled "Enex Ground."  It's the story of my family's oldest burying ground in Rowan County KY.   At the same time "Enex Ground" is a remembrance of John I (the "I" for nothing, like the "S" in Harry S Truman), an… Read full post »
5 Comments
MAY 13, 2010 3:42PM

Enex Ground

 
ENEX003 
 
The cemetery was unplanned, its existence an accident, a result of events random as a coin toss.  If it hadn't been for a killing, the clearing would have become a cabin site or cornfield.  
Toward the end of the unCivil War two young men… Read full post »
14 Comments
FEBRUARY 17, 2010 12:51AM

KENNY VERSUS THE SPIDER MONKEY



Remember when small town parks had monkey houses?  Or fake rock caves, where mangy black bears and geriatric lions dozed away the warm months?  One spring my buddy Kenny and I ditched school to hang out in a local park, and discovered "the monkey house" had reopened. … Read full post »
1 Comments
JANUARY 13, 2010 6:06PM

An Old Red Glider

"C.K. Dexter Haven" wrote a lyrical and memorable Open Salon post here:


The illustration for the piece is a glider that looks _exactly_ like the one on our front porch.  It belonged to my paternal grandparents,… Read full post »
3 Comments
NOVEMBER 29, 2009 12:41AM

Tom's Angels

                                                               ANGELS

This isn't an old story.  It dates from the mid-1990s, and howeve… Read full post »
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JANUARY 16, 2009 9:03PM

My search for the world's finest baby-sitter

It's important tell special people in our lives that we appreciate and remember them.  That goes for people we knew way back in the distant fuzzy parts of our existence, people we seldom --if ever see-- as well as those who are a part of our present-day existence.  … Read full post »
4 Comments
JANUARY 15, 2009 11:07AM

Best compliment: I was "the voice of God"

When Greg Thomas issued a call for men to relate their greatest compliment, I knew exactly how to respond.  This will be an over-long post simply because I don't want to split it.  And it needs a preface:

I've not written or talked about this often because I don't want… Read full post »
4 Comments
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