Showing Tag: "vacation" (Show all posts)

How I Spent My Summer Vacation, 2022 Edition...

Posted by John Allen Small on Wednesday, August 17, 2022, In : Travel 

Lighthouse At Casco Bay, Portland, Maine (Photo by Yours Truly)



I wanted to. I really did.

There I was, driving along U.S. Highway 22 west on the evening of Aug. 5, through the most torrential downpours that I had seen in many a moon. It was the longest single day we would spend on the road during this year’s summer vacation - a 12-hour, 682-mile trek that began that morning in Maine and would ultimately end at the Doubletree Convention Center in Cranberry, Penn., that night - and to be h...


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"LIKE A BAND OF GYPSIES WE GO DOWN THE HIGHWAY..."

Posted by John Allen Small on Wednesday, August 11, 2021, In : Travel 

I love road trips. Always have.


I guess that’s one more thing we can blame on my late parents. Many of my happiest memories from childhood revolve around the road trips my family took - not just the traditional summer vacations, but those unplanned, spur-of-the-moment treks we would make whenever Dad got the itch. 


One such voyage in particular stands out in my memory almost as if it happened yesterday. 


It was in the summer of 1969. Mom was still expecting my youngest brother, who would...


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HOW WE DIDN'T SPEND OUR SUMMER VACATION...

Posted by John Allen Small on Tuesday, August 18, 2020, In : Reminiscence 
(Granddaughter Zoey at the Blue Zoo Aquarium in Oklahoma City)


It has become something of a tradition, over the past decade or two, to devote this space around this time of year to a topic many of us remember from our grade school days: “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.”

Such accounts over the years have focused on trips to Canada, Louisiana and New York; visits to such varied destinations as the Grand Canyon, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Seattle’s Space Needle and (yes!) the...


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HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION (2016 EDITION)

Posted by John Allen Small on Wednesday, August 10, 2016, In : Travel 
Above: Yours Truly (bottom left) and my FarmerCon friends at the Hyatt Regency in Columbus, Ohio, during the 2016 PulpFest convention July 21-24)

Apologies if I’ve looked or acted a little out of it over the past week or so, but it hasn’t been without reason. My mind and body have been in recovery mode, trying to get re-acclimated to the usual day-to-day routine after the whirlwind extravapalooza that was (drumroll, please) Small Family Vacation 2016.


We set out bright and early on the mo...


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"CRASH" SMALL RIDES AGAIN! (or, How I Spent My Summer Vacation)

Posted by John Allen Small on Wednesday, July 29, 2015, In : Travel 

Remember that scene in the film Star Trek III: The Search For Spock in which the Starship Enterprise returns to Earth, and the officers on duty at Spacedock gaze sadly upon the sight of the battle damage that was inflicted by the villainous Khan in the previous movie? 


I thought of that scene this past Saturday as my wife Melissa, son Joshua and I pulled into our driveway at the conclusion of our annual two-week vacation.


No, we didn’t find ourselves in mortal combat with an evil, genetic...


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VACATION 2012: OUR TRIP TO MARS (AND BEYOND)

Posted by John Allen Small on Thursday, August 2, 2012, In : Travel 

No, your eyes aren't playing tricks on you. You read the headline at the top of this column correctly; the Small Family really DID go to Mars during our recently completed summer vacation.


Mars, Pennsylvania, that is.


It was just a brief side trip during the annual family vacation, which this year took us to Niagara Falls, Canada. It was my fourth trip to Canada but my first to the Falls; my wife Melissa had visited there once or twice with her family when she was younger, but my three prev...


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About Me


John Allen Small John A. Small is an award-winning newspaper journalist, columnist and broadcaster whose work has been honored by the Oklahoma Press Association, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press, the National Newspaper Association, and the Oklahoma Education Association. He and his wife Melissa were married in 1986; they have two sons, Joshua Orrin (born 1991) and William Ian (born 1996). Mr. Small is the News Editor and columnist for the Johnston County Capital-Democrat, a weekly newspaper headquartered in Tishomingo, OK. He obtained his nickname, "Bard of the Lesser Boulevards," from a journalism colleague - the late Phil Byrum - in recognition of the success of his popular newspaper column, "Small Talk." (In addition to the many awards the column itself has received over the years, a radio version of "Small Talk" earned an award for "Best Small Market Commentary" from the Society of Professional Journalists in 1998.) John was born in Oklahoma City in 1963; lived in the Bradley-Bourbonnais-Kankakee area of Illinois for most of the next 28 years (with brief sojourns in Texas and Athens, Greece, thrown in to break up the monotony); then returned to his native state in 1991, where he currently resides in the Tishomingo/Ravia area. He graduated from Bradley-Bourbonnais Community High School in 1981, and received his bachelor's degree in journalism from Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais in 1991. The years between high school and college were a period frought with numerous exploits and misadventures, some of which have become the stuff of legend; nobody was hurt along the way, however, which should count for something. In addition to his professional career as a journalist he has published two short story collections: "Days Gone By: Legends And Tales Of Sipokni West" (2007), a collection of western stories; and "Something In The Air" (2011), a more eclectic collection. He was also a contributor to the 2005 Locus Award-nominated science fiction anthology "Myths For The Modern Age: Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton Universe," edited by Win Scott Eckert. In additon he has written a stage play and a self-published cookbook; served as project editor for a book about the JFK assassination entitled "The Men On The Sixth Floor"; and has either published or posted on the Internet a number of essays, stories and poems. He has also won writing awards from the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the National Library of Poetry. He is a past president of the Johnston County Chamber of Commerce in Tishomingo; was a charter member and past president of the Johnston County Reading Council, the local literacy advocacy and "friends of the library" organization; served as Johnston County's first-ever Americans with Disabilities Act coordinator in 1994-95; served two terms as chairman of the Johnston County (OK) Democratic Party; and has taught journalism classes for local Boy Scout Merit Badge Fairs. He is a member of the New Wold Newton Meteorics Society.

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