(Digital Art by Me!)

Still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, Nathaniel Rackham (Smoky Gulch High School Class of 1957 - Go Wombats!) stumbled into the kitchen one Sunday morning after sleeping in late and gave his wife of sixty years a peck on the cheek as she prepared breakfast. 

Allene smiled at her husband in response as she stirred the corned beef hash she was browning in the skillet. But her smile faded as she noticed the unusual expression etched upon Nathaniel’s face.

“Something wron...

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It was the Friday that Leslie James, the manager of the Majestic Theatre in Eureka Creek, had been waiting for all summer: opening day for the Harry Potter And Percy Jackson Meet The Hobbits Of Alderaan, and if the size of the crowd that had turned out for the first showing was any indication of the turnout still to come it looked as if the movie would have little trouble making good on its promise of being the biggest blockbuster of the year.

Leslie was standing there in the lobby, smiling at...

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(NOTE: This week's entry in the "Spohn Challenge" project is being posted a couple of days later than usual because of our newspaper deadline schedule over the Memorial Day weekend. This particular story, though fictionalized, is based on something that actually happened not long after Melissa and I moved from Illinois to Oklahoma back in the early 1990s.)



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(NOTE: This week's entry in the ongoing "Spohn Challenge" project is written in the form of a newspaper story...)

(From the Eureka Creek (OK) Weekly Pedestrian, April 3, 2014)

The city council campaign, debate over storm sirens and arguments about whether to remove the traffic signal at the intersection of Main and Broadway all took a back seat in the news this past week, as Eureka Creek briefly played host to an emissary from another planet.

Two large spacecraft were spotted hovering over t...

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Many years ago, when I was just a wee nipper growing up on the 400 block of North Michigan Avenue in Bradley, Illinois, there was a very wise man who lived down the street from us named Ferdinand Lobomowicz. He was a very intelligent man, and all of us children looked up to him; he was the only man any of us knew who we believed might actually be smarter than our fathers. Which, in my case at least, was quite the admission.

One day I was playing in the front yard with my two younger brothers...

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(Note: This week's entry in the "Spohn Challenge" is a lighthearted return to the setting of my first book, Days Gone By: Legends And Tales Of Sipokni West [pictured above], which is available for purchase at Amazon.)

Sheriff Jess Harper was on his way over to the Flaming Star one Saturday to have some lunch and talk a bit with Wichita Billings when he happened to spy Clem Morrison walking down the middle of the street waring nothing but his boots.

"What the...?"  Harper dashed across into th...

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It's a sad, sad story. I know, because I was there and I saw it happen...

There was this fellow I once knew who happened to be the frustrated conductor of an extremely mediocre local symphony orchestra. Few if any of the individual musicians could really be said to be players of professional quality; indeed, the only reason they had been accepted as members of this particular orchestra is because the city fathers wanted a local orchestra and, after all, they had to get their players from som...

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(NOTE: This latest entry in the weekly "Spohn Challenge" project should be of interest to some of my Wold Newton buddies...)

Drinnon the Black Knight dropped his sword and ran away screaming as the dragon Loridans vomited a steady stream of fire in the direction of the knight’s retreating backside.

As he watched, Sir Eckert pulled the Princess close to him and said with a triumphant grin, “Well, if you can't stand the heat, don't tickle the dragon.”

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(NOTE: My latest entry in the weekly Spohn Challenge project is also the latest in my ongoing efforts at writing two-sentence stories, as per David Gerrold's challenge of a while back...)

"Listen," Little Sally whispered in her baby brother's ear, "I think that's Santa's sleigh I hear."

Just then the roof caved in.

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(NOTE: This latest entry in the "Spohn Challenge" project is submitted with sincerest best wishes for a happy holiday.)

Thanksgiving was fast approaching, and Mrs. and Mrs. Patterson had received a holiday card in the mail from their son and his family, who lived out on the west coast and were planning to spend the holiday this year with his wife’s family. The poem printed inside the card was your typical bit of greeting card drivel, but their son’s handwritten note below that poem told ho...

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(NOTE: This is entry number eight in the weekly "Spohn Challenge" project. Steve Sykes, what have you gotten me into?"



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The following is one of my all-time favorite humorous Christmas stories, which I first heard told by George Grove of the Kingston Trio on their Christmas concert album a few years back:

Three men all die on Christmas Eve and meet St. Peter at the Pearly Gates. St, Peter tells them that, since it is Christmas Eve, he can't let them pass through unless they can present some sort of item associated with the holiday.

The first man reaches into his pocket and pulls out a cigarette lighter. He ligh...

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Here's yet a third cover for an imagined comics crossover idea i came with with the other day. Have to be honest with you, though: even I don't know what I was thinking of when this one popped into my head...
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One day not too very long ago I was talking with one of my sons (I won’t say which one, so as to try to avoid any undue embarrassment – although he’d probably tell you that ship sailed a long time ago), who in between sips of chocolate milk shared a most interesting hypothesis with me.

“Sometimes,” he said in a voice so earnest I just knew he was pulling my leg, “I get the feeling that the Universe was created by time travel.”

I put down the magazine I was reading and gave him...

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