Category: Essays & Stories

My Survivor’s Mission: Giving Hope Voice      Long I’ve been waiting for some signal or sign.  Finally, God has revealed my purpose. This is my mission. I’ve received my orders.      I’ve now endured fifteen long years, battling my way through seemingly insurmountable life and death odds, fighting my...

I May Have Been a Pep Rally Cheerleading Phenom, But My True High School Major Was Lunch Hour.      I didn’t fully realize it at the time, but I absolutely loved high school.  Many cherished memories of life were crammed into those four short years, including some of my...

Leadership isn’t always defined by the score. **********      It’s a play most Saranac Lake football folks besides me likely don’t even remember. It’s not glorified in yearbook photos. It never made any record book. It is, however, the one play from my high school football career that has...

2023 Winter Carnival Musings Moments & Memories My Heart of the Adirondacks Hometown Carnival Montage FEATURING: Saranac Lake’s Illustrious Lawn Chair Ladies ********** What a perfect 2023 Saranac Lake Winter Carnival Parade Saturday! Bright and sunny, not windy or snowing, the thermometer reading an Adirondack balmy mid-twenties. My wife...

Take Care What You Seek! It Just Might Find You!      In order to protect the innocent (and not so innocent) in this story, I’ll stick with our SLHS crew’s nicknames:  Monk, Blind, Chet, Juan, Jordan, Feinie, Dupe, Missy, Krissy, Maryanne, Shelly & Leslie. Well, okay, mostly nicknames, anyways....

     Most folks who think they know me really only know part of me. Most folks who think they know me only know the part I let them see. The part that goes huntin’, fishin’, campin’ out and explorin’. The part that digs 15 ponds by hand. The part...

There Once Was A Time When Every Town Had A Team Every Team Had A Star Every Boy Had A Dream      This is the fifth in my series of baseball card themed stories.  As a boy growing up in Saranac Lake, despite the long, cold winters and short...

Plus other recent Paw Patrol happenstances at our family’s Watertown snow fortress. Featuring: Gypsy Rose      Gypsy Rose and I have encountered some very strange happenings lately during Paw Patrols at our family’s north country snow fortress.      First of all, there was a mysterious murder. Who Killed Stanley...

An Adirondack Outlaw’s fight to give his survivor’s journey a voice. “You will most likely never speak again.”      Those words were spoken as part of my Memorial Sloan Kettering cancer surgeon’s final grim prognosis.  Just before they put me under and wheeled me into the operating room. Just...

It’s An Age-Old Question: “How Much Wood Could a Woodchuck Chuck If a Woodchuck Could Chuck Wood?”      It’s a mystery I’ve been pondering since I was a lad.  I’ve dedicated a lifetime of serious research and study seeking to answer to this question. I’ve chucked my own fair...