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Swaying in the Breeze
On one very hot day, my wife and I followed an abandoned Illinois Central rail bed to an old trestle bridge. What stayed with me most wasn’t the bridge, though. It was a patch of wildflowers dancing in the wind on the other side.
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Season Is What We Put on Food
I’m not one of those people who talks about “BBQ season.” Around here, season is what we put on food. If I want to cook outside, I cook outside. Snow, rain, heat, cold, it doesn’t much matter to me. A grill doesn’t know what month it is, and neither do I when the mood hits. On this particular night, my wife was working one of those long shifts that more often than not drags on into the early morning hours. So while she was at work, I decided I was going to have myself a cookout. Now before anybody gets the wrong idea, I didn’t forget about her. I forgot…
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I Went for the Train
I have loved trains for just about as long as I can remember, so when I saw that Union Pacific’s Big Boy 4014 was coming to Chester, Illinois, home of Popeye the Sailor Man, that got my attention in a hurry. I was laying in bed that morning, soaking up the cool air from the AC while the summer heat was already gearing up outside, when I saw the posting. I talked my wife into going, and before long that was the plan. We were headed to Chester to see Big Boy for ourselves. It was hot as all get out that day. Not just hot, but that thick Illinois…
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A Name in Gold
I wasn’t looking for a camera case that day. As a matter of fact, it was about the furthest thing from what I was looking for. I was hunting for a tool for door hinges. Because apparently that’s how these things go. How that turned into me staring at a nearly hundred-year-old camera case with somebody’s name pressed into it in gold, I still couldn’t fully tell you. One of those “you may be interested” things popped up, and mixed in with everything else were a few camera cases. One of them had something on it. That made me stop. At first, I figured it was just another old case…
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A Story Hidden in the Case
Some old cameras are just neat old cameras. Then every once in a while, one comes along that feels like a little more than that. This one meant something to me before I ever really looked it over. My wife was out of state with her mom that day, and somewhere in the middle of all that, she still took time to think of me and my hobby. She came home with three cameras. That meant a lot to me. Stuff like that stays with a man. She did not have to do it, but she did, and that made them special before I ever opened a case or looked…
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Part of a Story That Started Long Ago
When the package arrived, it looked like any other box that had come through the mail.Packing peanuts, bubble wrap, the usual packing job. Nothing unusual at first.But once I started unwrapping it, I had a feeling this one might be a little different. The first thing that surprised me was the weight. For something called a pocket camera, it was heavier than I expected. Not heavy in a bad way, just solid – like it had more years behind it than it was letting on. As the last of the bubble wrap came off, I noticed the box. The paper was yellowed with age, and there was handwriting on the…
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Why I Chose to Shoot in Monochrome That Day
(This post continues a story from a photo I shared earlier.) There’s a song I’ve always liked called In Color by Jamey Johnson. He repeats the same line through most of the song, but it didn’t really hit me until I watched the video all the way through one day. Seeing those old photos in black and white, and then watching the color come in at the end, made the meaning land a little different. “A picture’s worth a thousand words,But you can’t see what those shades of gray keep covered…You should’ve seen it in color.” That line came back to me the day I took the photo of my…
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A Photo I Took That Means Something to Me
I don’t remember thinking much when I took this photo.That’s usually how the ones that matter seem to happen. It was a hot July day outside during a family cookout. The kind of heat you don’t fight, you just accept and slow down for. People talking, food cooking, kids coming and going. Nothing all that special on the surface. Then there was this. My wife, her hair pulled back, holding our grandson against her chest. No posing. No playing to the camera. Just comfort and closeness. He fit there like that was exactly where he belonged. My wife holding our grandson the way only a grandmother can. Calm, steady, and…
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My Go-To Cookout Meal
When it comes to cookouts, I tend to keep things pretty simple. I’m not trying to reinvent anything or impress anyone with fancy techniques. I just stick with what works and what people enjoy eating. Most of the time, my go-to cookout meal starts with ribs. Either St. Louis–cut ribs or a full rack of spares, depending on what I can get and how many people are coming over. I season them up, get them on the grill or smoker, and let them take their time. Ribs aren’t something you rush, and that’s part of what I enjoy about making them. Alongside the ribs, I almost always make MOINK balls.…
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A Small Engine Project That Started It All
I’ve always liked messing with small engines. There’s just something about taking one that won’t run, figuring out what is wrong with it, and getting it to fire off again that never gets old for me. I’m not talking about having the best tools in the shop or knowing every trick in the book. Half the time it’s just patience, paying attention, and not being afraid to take something apart and see what is going on. One project in particular takes me all the way back to first grade, and looking back now, it was probably the one that started all of it for me. My bonus dad had a…
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Pull up a chair and take a peek at some of the tales tucked away here.
