Browsing Archive: November, 2013

"A STORY A WEEK" NO. 10: HAPPY THANKSGIVING

Posted by John Allen Small on Wednesday, November 27, 2013, In : A Story A Week 
(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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THE TRAGEDY HAUNTS US STILL...

Posted by John Allen Small on Friday, November 22, 2013, In : History 

I was all of five months, 21 days and a handful of hours old on that dark day in November of 1963 when a man was murdered in broad daylight on the streets of Dallas, Texas... and history was changed irrevocably.


Our lifetimes intersected for a period, but I remember nothing about him. Or of that period in the early 1960s Kennedy’s name still evokes in the hearts and minds of so many who do remember him – a time of hope and optimism in America, when we were first looking towards the moon ...


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"A STORY A WEEK" NO. 9: TWO-SENTENCE WAR STORY

Posted by John Allen Small on Thursday, November 21, 2013, In : A Story A Week 
(NOTE: This is obviously entry number 9 in the weekly "Spohn Challenge" project. Another David Gerrold-inspired two-sentence shorty, this time of the war genre...)



"There, that's got it," Ezekiel Butterfield happily exclaimed to his wife as he slipped the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle into place.


Just then the bombing started...


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"A STORY A WEEK" NO. 8: ONE DAY IN MOTHER GOOSE LAND

Posted by John Allen Small on Friday, November 15, 2013, In : A Story A Week 
(NOTE: This is entry number eight in the weekly "Spohn Challenge" project. Steve Sykes, what have you gotten me into?"


Snow White, Tom Thumb and Quasimodo were having lunch together at the Brothers Grimm Commissary one day, swapping stories about their various misadventures and sharing gossip about other famous fairy tale characters they all knew.

At one point, for no apparent reason, Snow White took a sip of her chocolate milk and announced, “You know, I reckon I must be the most beautiful g...

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"A Story A Week" No. 7: Two-Sentence Science Fiction Story

Posted by John Allen Small on Friday, November 8, 2013, In : A Story A Week 
(Note: For this week's entry in the year-long "Spohn Challence" I decided to go back to the writing exercise David Gerrold discussed on his Facebook page a few weeks back - only this time instead of a two-sentence horror story I thought I'd try my hand at a two-sentence SF tale. This one was inspired by a telecommunications ad that's currently airing on TV...)


Horton activated the "help" app on his cell phone and said, "Google, how do I get home?"


"You don't," the digitized voice responded co...


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THE KINGSTON TRIO: A WORLD OF MUSIC

Posted by John Allen Small on Thursday, November 7, 2013, In : Pop Culture 

(Above left: The poster at the entryway of the Kingston Trio traveling exhibit at the American Banjo Museum in Oklahoma City through May of 2014. Above right: KT founding member Bob Shane holding copies of both the paperback and hardback editions of the anthology The Green Hornet: Still At Large, which contains my story "Bad Man's Blunder" in which The Hornet meets Bob, Nick Reynolds, John Stewart and Dean Reilly. Below: Just a few of the great KT albums released over the years.)



Longtime r...


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"A STORY A WEEK" NO. 6: HOMECOMING

Posted by John Allen Small on Friday, November 1, 2013, In : A Story A Week 
(NOTE: This is my sixth entry in the weekly "Spohn Challenge" project. Looking back over the finished product, I find that this one reads as if it is the ending chapter of a longer story.  Hmmm...)



Debbie was tucking Scottie in for the night when I got home. I didn’t think she’d heard me come in; I made practically no noise, and she kept her back to me as I stood watching her from the hallway outside his room. She sang that lullaby I’d taught her not long after he was born. The one my mo...

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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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