Posted April 01, 2015in Joe's Neighborhood
The grizzled man climbs up out of the litter-strewn riverbank at dusk. He hesitates. Flannel shirt wrongly buttoned over multiple undershirts, pants bunched on top of long underwear, a tight stocking cap pulled over a shaggy head with long white hair hanging from the sides. A homeless man. The blackened
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Posted March 25, 2015in Joe's Neighborhood
A knockout is clean and simple. You get knocked down. You don’t get up. It’s all over. No more floating like a butterfly or stinging like a bee. The end. A technical knockout is not so clean and not so simple. The referee calls the fight usually because the losing
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Posted March 18, 2015in Joe's Neighborhood
Illness is an interesting sculptor. It pulls the cheek bones higher. Hollows out the spaces near the mouth. Brightens the eyes just a tad. And, as the man across the table laughingly told me, “It is a hell of a weight loss program; it is effective, but I don’t recommend it.”
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Posted March 11, 2015in Joe's Neighborhood
The hallway is empty. High ceilings stretch off in the distance. Dark woodwork marks the openings for doorways hidden in shadowed recesses. And a low murmur of voices provides background. One-thousand-six-hundred voices to be exact. Oh, yeah, and one cop. I follow the directions from the front desk. Right. Then left. Then
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Posted March 04, 2015in Joe's Neighborhood
Just a goodbye is what she asked. Write a farewell. Nothing more. Certainly nothing rude. Nothing getting even. Nothing to settle old scores. Just goodbye to old friends, old enemies, and all the in-between. And, most importantly, goodbye to the neighborhood. To the East Village, a simple goodbye. The past few
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Posted February 25, 2015in Joe's Neighborhood
You couldn’t make it? Too bad. It was Iowana at its best. From across the state, young men and women came to compete at the Iowa High School State Wrestling Tournament — to see who was the strongest, the quickest and the most clever. They did moves like the half
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Posted February 18, 2015in Joe's Neighborhood
The corner door pushes open to a soft “dong.” That’s it. No automatic swoosh of doors ushering you into a neon-lit extravaganza of restaurants, dry cleaners, coffee shops, post offices, liquor stores, pharmacies and groceries. Nope. This door you have to push with your hands. And it pushes open only into
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Posted February 11, 2015in Joe's Neighborhood
The large bushy mustache has a life of its own. As do the quizzical eyebrows tucked behind rounded eyeglasses. And the tufts of hair wanting to go sideways at the ears. He could easily be an old vaudeville player made up with props from the back room. Certainly the one-liners
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Posted February 04, 2015in Joe's Neighborhood
The smell of clean causes your nose to flare when you enter the room. Sharp. Astringent. With an undertone of earthy. A fine wine. Laughter crosses from over the busy side of the counter. It’s mixed with distant barks and the sounds of people clipping, trimming, talking. When it is your
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Posted January 28, 2015in Joe's Neighborhood
The old Standard Oil Station in Osceola seemed an unlikely location for the boy’s childhood, given what eventually happened. Although I could be wrong about that. In those days, gas station attendants fixed cars, pumped gas, changed oil and wiped their hands on rags that were washed and rewashed. The
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