Mid-Missouri Memories

I spent my active time in the Navy aboard US Navy Destroyers in the '50s and '60s, those small ships they called the greyhounds of the sea because they didn't spend a lot of time in port.  It could be very boring during those long stretches at sea, so the officers and crew would make up their own entertainment in the form of variety shows, known as "smokers" on ships.  These smokers were

I love that scene in old westerns of a carriage with a patient horse, waiting for a doctor to come out of a farmhouse, swinging his bag and carrying an armload of baked goods or other forms of barter to pay for services rendered. It is a picture of a time that will never come again, for the days of house-calling doctors have gone the way of the dinosaurs.

I guess a memory can come from anywhere. That fact was proved to be true on Thursday as Doug and I discussed his recently shaved beard that he grew in support of the Detroit Red Wings. Unfortunately, Doug’s team spirit only carried them so far and his team was defeated. So it was that on Wednesday, June 12, 2013, a day that will forever be remembered by the Sokolowski family as the day daddy becam

The memory here is actually two memories. It is as much about my grandfather Clarence Wickliffe as it is about the radio. The two are inseparable, because I can not think of one without the other. My grandfather died when I was very young, but I know from the stories my mother has told me through the years, that he was a man who loved his children and grandchildren very much. The story below is on

When older people who grew up together talk, there is sure to be the inevitable comparison of today to the good old days of their youth and how much they miss one thing or another. I join them in missing those less complicated times, but I wonder if the reason we miss them could have more to do with our ages than the fact that times were better.

I believe a man has two first loves in his life: one is a girl and the other is a car. I also believe sometimes the love for that car and the memory of it outlasts the first girl.

The High Chair On cold winter mornings I sometimes think back to when I was a small child sitting in front of an old wood cook stove. In that memory, I am sitting in the handmade wooden high chair my grandfather Wickliffe built just for me. Mom always pulled it up close to the stove where I would be warm, and she could give me some attention between stirring the gravy and flipping the eggs. Read M

Mom’s Driving Lesson Learning to drive the smooth-operating cars of today, with their automatic transmissions and hydraulic brakes, is a snap compared to the rough-handling ones of the days of our mothers and fathers.

Let’s face it, the majority of people we meet as kids do not stick in our minds that well. If they aren’t family, there has to be something unique about them to make them memorable. One of the really unique people I can still remember from my childhood was an old wolf hunter, and unique isn’t a strong enough word to describe him.

I owe my overweight status to the fact that I had a mother and grandmother while I was growing up who had few peers when it came to cooking, and oh how I enjoyed getting this way. This Mid-Missouri Memory always makes my mouth water.