Utterly Useless Knowledge

My first bike was a Huffy. Thunder Road 42, to be exact.  It had blue fenders and a number plate on the front of the handlebars, but it wasn't a real dirt bike.  It was on the market in the early 80's, in the transition from early 70’s banana seats to real BMX bikes for kids.  I got it as a birthday present when I was 5.  I was too young to ride it, so Dad put training wheels on it.  Training wheels weren't meant for the disjointed, tree root-displaced sidewalks of Malvern; normal walking was treacherous.  So it was a few days of boring circles in the driveway, then the luster wore off.   One day, my Dad took the training wheels off of the bike, and Mom wanted to work with me on my balance in the backyard.  Our yard sloped from east to west-right to left as you looked from our deck.  She started me at the east end of the yard, hanging on to a bar on the back of my bike seat, jogging behind me, keeping me upright as we quickly picked up...

It started innocently enough. It escalated from the mere suggestion of greatness from a fellow foodie. It ended in sheer indulgence, and a wife totally doing it wrong. In my defense, it could've had bacon. My chest is tight.

The true voice of the Holiday season is here. "MACEO!!"

I really do love the vastness of the internet some days.  

It was called the rest home by most in town, but it certainly wasn't the type of place that the elderly go to shuffle up & down hallway corridors aimlessly, or lay in bed waiting out their last days on earth. The group home was in a century-old hotel, just east of Main on 3rd St. For me, it was across the street from Granny's house, across from the Leader Office and directly behind Randy's Tastee Sweet. It was named Nishna Cottage, and it was home for a collection of ex-junkies, the mentally disabled, and other various adults with mental and physical disabilities that, to an impressionable youth, appeared to have been forgotten about by family, if they had any left that would still claim them. The structure itself had served as a hotel in the late 19th early 20th century. It was on the payroll as a state institution, loosely affiliated wit the Glenwood State Hospital & School, a fifteen minute drive west of town. The residents, from what I could tell, were free t...