Because today is Halloween, I thought I would repost a blog about a ghost story going back to my roots in Ohio. My mother’s family lived in the charming little town of Maumee, on the banks of the Maumee River. This area is rich in history and was hotly contested when settlers began encroaching on […]
My heart is heavy with the news that my friend and fellow author George Wier has lost his battle with esophageal cancer. The world is a darker place without George’s sense of humor and many talents in it. Though we lived in different parts of the country, and most of our contact over the years […]
Somebody once told me I could go to a stranger’s funeral and make friends with the guy in the box by the time the preaching was over. I’m not sure if that is 100% true, but I have always believed in the old saying that a stranger is just a friend you haven’t met before. […]
Halloween has long since passed, but today I thought I would share a ghost story with you that I was reminded of on our recent visit to Ohio. My mother’s family lived in the charming little town of Maumee, on the banks of the Maumee River. This area is rich in history and was hotly […]
When we first got together Terry had a collection of beautiful antique Aladdin oil lamps. I don’t know how many she had, but it was enough to be impressive when you walked in the door of her cabin. And because we lived in the high mountains of Arizona, where winter storms sometimes knocked out power […]
Thanksgiving Day we left home sometime around 1:30 PM and drove 120 miles to Jacksonville, where we checked into the Hampton Inn on Beach Boulevard. This is where we prefer to stay when we are in town for an appointment at the Mayo Clinic. On our first visit to Mayo, a few weeks ago we […]
We love getting off the interstate highways and taking the two-lane roads whenever we can. As I have said many times before, a Denny’s or a chain hotel at an interstate exit in Kansas is no different than one in Michigan or California. But the two-lane roads will take you to the real America. Small […]
Happy Thanksgiving everybody! Wherever you are and whoever you are with, I hope you have a wonderful time today. And whether you are a religious person or not, I hope you take a moment or two to reflect on all the things that we have to be thankful for. Yes, there is a lot of […]
Don’t you just hate telemarketers? You can be on every Do Not Call list in the world and it doesn’t matter to those creeps. They will still bother you. We got our cell phones years ago when we were in Elkhart, Indiana, which is area code 574. At least once a day we get a […]
If you are a new RVer or a wannabe RVer, I’ve got some very good news for you! The Escapees RV Club will be having one of their excellent RVers Boot Camps in the Dallas, Texas area this coming spring. If you are not familiar with this excellent program, it was created by what I consider […]
There are some questions I get asked so many times that I’m almost tempted to just type the answer once and cut and paste it in from then on to save myself the trouble of having to retype it all over again. Yesterday was a good example. I got an email from someone asking me […]
According to the weatherman, the worst of the summer weather is behind us and we can expect to see a cooling trend in the next week or so. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be cool, it’s just going to be less hot. It will be down in the low to mid 80s until Wednesday […]
We had planned to spend yesterday showing my son Travis and his wife Geli some more of our area, but when we got up yesterday morning nobody seemed all that energetic, so we changed our plans and hung around the house instead. Travis’ 40th birthday is a week from today, and last year we went […]
We spent much of yesterday showing my son Travis and his wife Geli around the area, and I think by the time we were done they realized they weren’t back home in Alabama anymore. We started out at Sugar Mill Ruins in New Smyrna Beach, exploring what’s left of an old pre-Civil War sugar mill. […]
Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks; when she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one. We all remember that little poem, and many of us think we know the macabre story behind it. But do we? On August 4, 1892, Andrew Borden and his wife Abby were hacked […]
It seemed like every day for the last week or two the weatherman has been predicting rain for our area. And though there has been some rain come down around us, all we have had here is a brief shower or two that lasted for a couple of minutes. But that all changed yesterday. A […]
After working in the hot garage most of Thursday afternoon insulating the door, neither Terry or I felt very energetic yesterday. The heat kind of kicked our butts. But the good news is, the job was successful. There was no heat at all coming through the door yesterday. So we suffered a little to make […]
I finished laying out the new issue of the Gypsy Journal late yesterday and printed it out for Terry to proof. She’ll do that this morning, then I’ll make any final corrections, upload it to our web server, and then send it out to our subscribers. So sometime this evening you should be getting the link. […]
Note: This story is from the January-February 2015 issue of the Gypsy Journal. We all know a lot about George Washington, the Father of Our Country, but how much do you know about his mother, Mary Washington? Would she be called the Grandmother of Our Country? Born November 30, 1708, in Lancaster County, Virginia, Mary […]
They say all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. I don’t know about Jack, but I do know that all work and no play makes a Nick grumpy man. And since I’ve been spending a lot of time writing the last few days, I really needed a play day. So a little […]