My dad is a big man. He’s 6’2” and is the tallest man that height I’ve ever met. We all know plenty of men that are that tall. It’s the perfect height for a man to be, tall enough to be considered tall without being so tall that life becomes difficult because of your size. […]
Thanksgiving in our family is not for the weak. We take it very seriously. After a full day, stomachs may hurt because of all the food (or is it all of the laughter, it’s hard to tell).
As a kid at school functions, I never worried about getting separated from my Mom. All I had to do was stop and listen. Pretty soon I would hear her voice or laughter. In crowds of several hundred people, it never failed. She wasn’t loud, but her voice sure carried and she loved to visit. […]
I honestly cannot remember a time growing up that dad and I didn’t talk about politics or history. It has always been our thing.
There is photographic evidence that I was abused by my sisters as a child. I was the sixth child born to our parents, and I think by the time I came along they had pretty much lost interest. As a youngster, my care was mostly left to the tender mercies of Donna and Jenny.
Mom and Dad had been married a few years. Dad was working at the Masonite plant in Laurel. After some time, they saved enough money to make a down payment on a farm. Jerry was only two or three years old. Dad built their first house on that farm in the community of Myrick, working […]
Dad told us of hand washing, starching, and ironing his best white shirt for Saturday night after doing a day’s work plowing behind a mule. That’s when he’d get ready and go to what he called a “sing.” I think a “sing” consisted of a number of groups of young men from miles around taking […]
The first couple of years we had the ranch, we fed the cows in a corral by the barn. After a few snows, the corral would become a muddy mess. It would be frozen in the mornings and boggy by the afternoon. The cows would be up to their knees in that mess and so were we whenever we went in the corral.
Dad and Uncle Noel took their sons Wayne, Jerry, and Wallace hunting in the mountains every year. One year, they all went in Dad’s pick-up: Dad, Jerry, and Uncle Noel rode up front, and Wayne and Wallace rode in the bed of the truck with all the camping supplies.
I was about nine years old when our neighbors, Slim and Ruby Campbell, gave me a Shetland pony. Mr. Campbell was a tall, distinguished-looking man, and thin as a whip. They were known to have been in the racehorse business. They were new to the neighborhood, so Mom, Dad, and I had stopped by their […]
In 1963, my family had been living outside of Roswell, N.M. for about ten years. They had moved there from Mississippi where Mom and Dad had been born. Their parents and grandparents had been born there as well. Mississippi was home and their roots were deep. After they got married and started a family, Dad […]
You have been inundated with information and knowledge of almost anything is at your fingertips. With just a few keystrokes, you can access information that might have taken hours or days to gather not too long ago. What you haven’t been inundated with is wisdom. In the grand scheme of things, wisdom is more important. You can become wise by living long and learning from all your mistakes (which will be painful) or you can gain wisdom by learning from the mistakes of others.
I was probably 11 or 12 years old and we were living at “the old place” in Roswell. Back then there wasn’t cable TV, video games, social media or much in the way of anything beyond books that were readily accessible and designed to occupying your time. It required a little imagination for a young […]
My sisters, Donna, Jenny and I grew up having a lot of fun snow sledding. There is a lot more to sledding than just sliding down hills. Good sled runs have to be built and we learned to be expert sled run builders for all kinds of sleds; we knew our business! Jerry and Wallace […]
In 1984 I was between paychecks when Dad’s birthday, February 19th, came around. Going to a store and buying a gift was not an option, neither was doing nothing; I needed to do something! My solution was to write a tribute to my Dad. So that’s what I did. I wished Dad happy birthday and […]
On Aug. 19th. I posted a story about horse breaking. This is sort of a continuation of that story. Two or three years after we moved to Colorado Jerry got to talking about a trip to the high country. I’m pretty sure Jerry lived in Albuquerque at the time and worked with our Dad building […]
I ask Rebecca a few weeks ago,when Dan started asking for stories, what would she write about her memories of family gatherings at Grandmother Wade’s, with out taking a breath she said, It would start with “Oh shit,there’s Jerry!!!” And I knew well what she meant! He would terrify us as much as possible,laughing the […]
After moving to Colorado somehow my family became “horse poor.” We moved there with several horses, but for some reason Dad and Jerry both brought more home. It seems like all of them were unbroken. Jerry would even bring other people’s horses to be broken. Jerry came up with a method for breaking a horse […]
Jerry and I flew to Jackson and Jerry rented a car, as soon as we heard Aunt Willamay had passed. We were there to support Uncle Hack and to represent the western Wade’s. We got there late in the afternoon and spent the evening trying to be a comfort to our Uncle. Uncle Hack was […]
Hi everybody, hoping this finds you well. Daina and I hope to go home to NM soon, I’m feeling a lot better. When I go back to work, I won’t have as much time to pester you with my history project. Many have said kind words about my little stories; thanks a lot they are […]
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